July 30, 2018 7:00am by David Farrar

Expect more of this

It may or may not have been a coincidence that Jacinda Ardern broke radio silence for the first time in nearly a month on the same day National leader Simon Bridges took to the stage with his own baby and young children for his first major speech to the National Party faithful.

There had been murmurs in National ahead of the weekend about whether or not Ardern would gatecrash Bridges’ big day from maternity leave.

But Ardern’s brief Facebook message talking about her return to work in the next week or so still managed to catch some of them by surprise. It was her first since a Facebook post celebrating the start of Labour’s families package on July 1.

Timing your video to be one hour after the opposition leader’s conference speech is pretty desperate stuff.

If Labour were smarter they would have done the Ardern video the next day, so it wouldn’t look so blatant.