The Final (Electoral) Countdown – Part three – The Front Row

Propping up the nation

This is the final (thank God, I hear everyone saying) in this series of the thinking man’s guide to the 2020 election. Alternatively, it is the last chance to dance before we know what the dancefloor will be like for the next three years.

The parties I am going to review here are the ones who, in all but two cases will be most likely to make up our next Parliament.

New Zealand First

They all say that you can never rule Whinny and his cult of personality party out, but I think that on this occasion we might just be able to do that.

The party is currently stuck on 2% in the polls and while the polls are not the final election result, I would think that it will take something pretty dramatic to lift them out of that position and into Parliament with such a short time to go before the real thing.

Their biggest problem is that they do not have a single electorate MP. They are only in Parliament at present because of the percentage of party votes they got in 2017. The obvious significance of that is that as long as they are running at 2% they have no chance whatsoever of getting a single seat unless they manage to bag an electorate seat. The party hasn’t made this any easier for itself by choosing to only contest 25 of the 71 electorate seats on offer. I can only see two electorates where they might have a glimmer of a chance and those would be Shane Jones in Northland, where he might be able to unseat sitting National Party MP Matt King and Ron Mark in Wairarapa where the sitting National Party MP Alastair Scott has retired. Even then it will be a big ask. Shane Jones is one helluva loose cannon and has a tendency to scare the horses and the voters, so I’d rate that a looooong shot. Ron Mark has a pretty high profile in Wairarapa, having been a local mayor at one stage and so I would say he is the one upon whom the party’s hopes are loaded. No pressure, Ron.

The second biggest problem for the NZ First Party is that it has been Whinny’s baby for far too long and as a result, there has been no obvious succession plan. Add to that the fact that Whinny is now well past his sell-by date and to be perfectly frank, is showing signs of “losing the plot”. I sincerely believe that he is not a well man and should retire while he still has the capacity to make such a decision.

Whether the party will be able to come back after this election is going to be interesting to see. But one thing is for sure, it won’t be under Whinny’s leadership, because by the time of the next election he will be nearly 80 years old and given his recent performances he certainly won’t be up to it.

The Green Party of Aotearoa/New Zealand

This is another party that is struggling somewhat, although in the latest poll they seem to have made some reasonable steps forward and now are nestled on around 6%. However, they are not in safe territory yet as I am pretty sure the margin for error in these sorts of polls is around 2-3%.

However, on their present showing I think the Greens will probably get some MPs into Parliament, but they will struggle to have as many as they got in 2017. That is a shame because the reason they are struggling is down to some very dumb moves that they have made and in particular the lousy timing of those stuff ups. They had a similar cock-up in 2017 when Metria Turei went and ‘fessed up to some less than honourable behaviour when she was younger. It was good that she owned up to it, but why do that just before an election? She would have been gone, no matter when she owned up, but she would not have caused so much collateral damage to her party had she done it mid-term or after the election.

This time James Shaw (thing) went and signed off on a document that he clearly hadn’t read properly. That was a seriously dumb thing to do at the best of times, but just before an election? Blimey! He seems a nice enough bloke, but that was a total brain fart. It does raise questions about his leadership abilities. However, since Gareth Hughes is leaving it also raises concerns about who is sufficiently skilled to replace Shaw.

I do hope they manage to get a few seats because they are a good influence on the Labour Party and in this Parliament they have achieved some good policy outcomes. I think they have been a good fit with the current Government.

The ACT Party

ACT will definitely be a part of the next Parliament. The way they are going they will be likely to have several MPs so Rimmer will have some mates in the house to boss around.

At the time of writing they are cruising at around 7% and since Seymour (Rimmer) is an electorate MP (Epsom) that gives them a head start. I would not be surprised to see them with four or five in Parliament. Mind you, I don’t know how much help that will be to them or the Nats because they will still not be enough to form a Government between them.

Of course, many of the votes they get will be coming from disgruntled Nats who will toss their lot in with ACT more as a protest vote than anything else because they can’t bear to vote for the Greens or Labour. The fact that he would be likely to coalesce with the Nats if the opportunity arose is not important as that won’t happen in this election.

However, one blip on the radar screen that could ruin ACT’s celebrations is the New Conservative party I reviewed in the last episode, because a lot of their voters will be from the same demographic.

The ACT Party will be a presence in the next Parliament and larger than in 2017, but they won’t be in a position of power.

The National Party

Whilst this party are almost certainly going to be the party with the second largest share of the seats in the next Parliament, I think (hope?) they will have a helluva lot less than they got in 2017.

There are, in my ever so humble opinion, a number of reasons for this.

First of all, the current Government has done a bloody good job. I will expand upon this when reviewing them.

Secondly the National Party has had so many leadership changes in the last few months that they are hardly likely to be able to convince voters that they are united as a party. It is also hard to avoid seeing that their current leader was only ever a stopgap as the party gnomes have clearly earmarked Luxon as their next leader. They were obviously hoping they could struggle through with Simon the Pixie and then dump him for losing the election, but they stuffed that up by denying Collins the post when the Pixie lost his way, and shoving in Mullet, a man who was clearly not ready or able despite being willing to take on the job. I suspect that he might have had his job made a little harder from inside the party due to sour grapes, but who knows. Either way he was a disaster from day one, being unaware of the ethnicity of his caucus or even which party he had joined.

Finally the biggest reason why the Nats will not win this election is not the fact that their current leader is an odious and spiteful character, It is because they haven’t sensed the sea change that has gone on in NZ politics over the last three years. We no longer champion nasty pieces of work who waste their energies on dirty tricks, lies and deceptions. We used to think that was just how politicians were. Now we have had a chance to see another sort of management of our country, where the focus is on people rather than simply “the economy”.

The first leaders’ debate was a classic example, where Collins spent the whole show making faces, smirking (although maybe the latter is due to all the product injected into her mug), and sniping away as if she was in the debating chamber rather than trying to show us all what a great person she wants us to believe that she is. She would have done much better to have come up with some policies and to have them all properly costed! Speaking of which, Goldie’s mathematical blunders hardly fills one with confidence that he could do a better job than Robertson.

I was also disappointed that she got away with repeating another of their lies from 2017 over the “$11 billion hole in the Labour figures at the last election, when that had been soundly dispatched and proven to be a lie at the time. Campbell should have known that and nailed her over it. Paddy Gower did a much better job the following week.

So it’s nah, not this time Little Bo Tox and that will probably mean not any time. because after she has lost this election by a larger margin than any of her predecessors ever have, she will be unceremoniously dumped and replaced by the next Jianqui clone off the production line.

The Labour Party

The Labour Party is not only “a shoe in” to take tis election; they might well gain enough seats to be able to govern alone, should they wish to. However, I suspect that they will still have an arrangement with the Greens (providing the Greens manage to get across the 5% line).

When reviewing this Government, it is hard to ignore how they have handled all the crises that have challenged their term. Terrorism, more earthquakes, droughts, a volcanic eruption and a global pandemic have all been issues they have had to deal with, and they have done extremely well with each of them. I’m not saying they have been perfect. There were things along the way they could have done better, especially around the pandemic. But we have to remember that the pandemic was a situation that nobody alive today has ever experienced. It truly was a “one in a hundred years” event and to make it even more challenging, it has been a dynamic situation that didn’t allow the luxury of time to react to it. It was/is a situation that requires rapid responses and will continue to bring further problems for the economy for a period of time that nobody can accurately foretell.

As a Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern has been a breath of fresh air. She has dealt with the issues promptly and bravely and all the time kept her cool. Despite some of the most banal questions I have ever heard being put to her by one journalist after another, she kept calm and carried on.

Some of the press need to learn their purpose in life. When someone tells you they are planning to make a decision on a certain day and that they will not be able to pre-empt that because they need the latest possible information to make that decision, you wait until D-Day to ask them about it and don’t waste EVERYBODY’S time continuously badgering them for an answer in all of the days leading up to it. She never failed deliver on the due date, so why did they keep on doing it? Were they really that stupid or simply deaf?

It must also be remembered that this Government inherited an absolute shambles from the previous custodians (or custardians). Just about every social service had been run down and was under-resourced. The Labour Government hit the ground running and upgraded a lot of things in the first few months of their leadership. Sure, some things didn’t get to where they need to be, but there was a lot of catch-up needed due to the previous 9 years of underfunding.

They also made a few errors such as over promising on the house building programme, but at least they had one! By and large they have done a good job and, to be frank there ain’t anyone else apart from my next contestant that could do better.

The Last Straw

Good news is on the way because at the next election there will be an alternative to all of the above parties. I’m thinking of launching a new party in 2023 which I am calling The Phil Ossifecal Party.

Our manifesto is:

Do more good shit

Smoke more good shit

Talk more shit

You have been warned! Don’t fuck this election up or I will be forced to register this party.