National's vaccine response emblematic of its wider malaise

The vaccine programme has been going gangbusters. There is no debate about that. 

We love a per capita stat and we are now right up there with any country's vaccination programme in terms of percentage of country vaccined on any given day. Go us!

We're definitely going hard and fast now - and this is not a piece to debate whether we should have ordered our vaccines earlier. That's been canvassed by everyone all of the time.

This is about strategy since we announced how fast we were vaccinating.

I'll admit, when the plan came out and it said we were going to need to vaccinate at 50,000 people per day I was deeply sceptical. And since the Delta outbreak we've been going at ~85,000 per day. Great stuff.

But of course when you're doing that many above forecast, you start running into supply issues. Chris Hipkins was the first to admit this, then the PM did some mealy mouthed messaging about supply not being the problem, but demand was... what? 

Anyway as soon as this got announced the correct thing for the opposition to do would have been to issue a statement saying that getting vaccinations into the arms of New Zealanders as fast as possible was the most important thing facing NZers at the moment. National would work with the Government doing whatever was needed to ensure that would happen.

This would have shown them as constructive and wanting what's best for NZ. 

Instead they went on the attack saying that this showed how incompetent Labour was. The problem with this line of attack is that the Government has been frantically searching the world to find surplus vaccinations so we can maintain our staggering rates.

Today I see reporting that we'll be announcing some deal that gets us more vaccinations faster. The credit for solving this problem will rightfully go to the Government. 

This was always going to be the outcome. And National should have recognised that and wanted in on that shared kudos. Instead they went for the one-off sugar hit of attacking the Government for a problem that would be solved.

All of this is to say that at the moment National is struggling to see beyond one day. It needs someone in the party doing strategy who can see further down the road: how today's actions might be viewed in a week, a fortnight, even a month.

Chris Bishop has a good strategic head on his shoulders, but he's spent the last fortnight being ritualistically humilitated by his leader, so probably isn't feeling that well disposed towards the party. Ignore his insanely negative tweets, the guy knows politicking.

I mean I don't want to see National get too strong, because I prefer a lefter government to what National would offer me. But as a huge politics nerd, I just hate seeing incompetence at every turn.