Simon Bridges, the leader of the conservative opposition in New Zealand, recently pledged non-partisan support on climate change. Bridges wrote to the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern offering to work with the incumbent Labour Party on an independent, non-political Climate Change Commission. The advisory body will support New Zealand’s emission reductions by suggesting government policy and holding the government to account by publishing progress reports.
Under Bridges the National Party has re-branded itself as a modernising force with “new ideas”, a move some analysts have understood as a response to the “Jacindamania” that swept Labour to victory in 2017.
