Tribute to Simon Bridges

The news of Simon Bridges’ resignation is a great loss for National and a greater loss for New Zealand politics.

In another life, I think Simon Bridges would have been an actor.

He has a natural talent for playing and we saw it on the first day of Jacinda’s first term in government when Simon pretended to count the first Labour, Green and New Zealand MPs into the House and claimed they weren’t. didn’t have the numbers to elect Trevor Mallard. as president.

By lying between his teeth, Simon managed to get vast concessions from Hipkins on the very floor of Parliament, which gave National a huge number of select committees they were not going to get.

He also showed his talent for performance when he held the nation’s attention hostage by drip-feeding the Treasury website hack for a week and humiliating Grant Robertson in the process.

He summed up the aspiration the National Party claims to represent and he had a better chance of winning back the middle Nu Zilind vote than Judith or Muller ever could.

The way Judith smeared him and tried to use a Me Too harpoon to damage his reputation was fucking shameful and a reminder of how carcinogenic she was.

His book was a surprisingly tender and intellectual reflection on masculinity in New Zealand that deserved far more attention than it received.

I disagreed with much of Simon’s politics but I respected his intelligence and humor. New Zealand politics will be less good without him, but I sincerely believe he will be amazing in whatever he does next.

A tribute to Simon Bridges.

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