National is a clear favourite, but this election isn’t the Tory cakewalk it’s cracked up to be.
Catherine Isaac: good communicator.
Were tourism not economically vital, it would be good if we could temporary ban all foreign visitors till after November 26, because it’s dreadful to think others might see how dippy many of us are over our Prime Minister.
There’s something unwholesome and downright embarrassing about treating a politician like something between a rock star, a member of the royal family and an honorary All Black. Talk about “wavin’ hands in the air and bustin’ a few moves” – for its campaign video, National may as well have put John Key in baggy strides and bling and had him rap MC Hammer’s deathless anthem, You Can’t Touch This.
He could style himself the super-dope homeboy from the state house and tell us “school’s in, sucka!” and still have us besotted. The most pertinent Hammer line is probably “Dance to this and you’re gonna get thinner.” Key’s common refrain that “ackshully, we’re in a dynamic global economic environment” is a tacit admission that the Government’s rosy fiscal forecasts are at least as fanciful and pointless as Labour’s.
But Labour has now tried pretty much everything short of an armed coup, only to make itself marginally more unpopular: underdog politics, pork-barrel politics,
attack politics, hell, even courageous advocacy of unpopular but necessary policies politics. Phil Goff even tweeted his new puppy.
And still … “ya cain’t touch dis!”
But behind that infectiously goofy smile, Key knows something that, strangely, most of us haven’t yet picked up on: this election isn’t the Tory cakewalk it’s cracked up to be.
It would be overdoing it to compare it to the Rugby World Cup final but, believe it or not, not all in National are as rampantly confident as the polls might appear to merit.
Sure, like the All Blacks, the Government is the undeniable favourite. But it’s not just about who has the power to win, but about who might just have the power to stop them. We thought it was the All Blacks who had the power to win, but it turned out to be the French. In a wholly unexpected flip of fortune, the All Blacks spent much of that game playing defensively and didn’t so much win themselves as stop the French from winning.
So far, only a blinkered fool would argue National doesn’t have the power to win. But the Opposition still has the power to stop National. It would be a hollow victory for Labour, whatever the MMP purists say. But the Nats privately know better than to rule it out.
Key may appear to be partying his way to victory, but his calculator brain knows the polls ackshully tell two stories. There’s the one about National having the numbers to govern on its own, having seldom fallen far below the 50% mark in the past three years. And there’s the other one, about how Labour and Green combined, with a bit of help from Hone and any margin-shrinkage between now and polling day, could draw uncomfortably close.
And there’s the sequel, already written, which isn’t getting any airtime, either: National, now almost certainly lacking coalition partners, is vulnerable to permanent Opposition exile when its popularity does ebb.
Even taking a recent and Nat-favourable poll, which found National with double Labour’s support, the story changes when you finish doing the sum. National has 52.5%, but Labour and the Greens have 38.5%. A 14% margin might still sound safe – but is it? First, factor in the margin of error, 3.1%. Then suppose the Maori vote collapses while Mana gains three or four seats – not a huge stretch – and assume, as it seems fair to do, that Act doesn’t get back in. Then assume the customary narrowing of the margin between National and Labour. Throw in something unexpectedly ghastly in National’s campaign and, always remembering the undecideds – 14% in this poll – we could have a cliffhanger after all.
See, Winston, we can get to that hideous territory without you!
Whatever one’s politics, it would be a harrowing and divisive scenario if Labour were able to form the next Government under these circumstances. Even though it would have a majority of seats in Parliament at its disposal, it would be hugely unpopular. A likely majority of voters would bitterly resent it, feeling they had expressly rejected its policies, only to have to wear them because of support from a couple of even less popular parties. It would be seen as the losers winning. We in the commentariat could argue till the cows came home that under MMP it was a fair result as a majority had been achieved, and that proportionately it really did represent the democratic will of the people. We would be drowned out by popular fury, and MMP itself would be the first casualty. I confidently predict there would be an instant uprising against the system, and a referendum petition of mighty proportions.
And never mind Occupy. Evict would be the theme of the new protest movement in this country, with loud calls for a new election, and heaven knows what consequences for our international reputation as a stable democracy. (And, ahem, did someone once mention Standard & Poor’s?)
As for the poor PM, not even Greece’s Georgios Papandreou and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi would envy Goff’s position. He wouldn’t know whether his biggest enemies were inside or outside the Beehive. Hone would loom larger than ever, especially if he held the balance of power. For all that Labour has sworn off working with him, it might, after all, have to at least humour his haka.
It would be horrible. It would make the old days of governing with Winston look like the lost land of Shangri-La.
Ordinarily, this sort of arithmetic would send the National leader high-tailing it to Epsom to a find a window seat in the cafe with the biggest windows on the busiest street to have the traditional “cup of tea” with the Act candidate.
But polling in the electorate so far shows National voters are pointedly resisting this coded strategic vote call even before it has been issued. Some can’t stomach Act leader Don Brash, others would rather have their bottoms boiled than vote for the candidate, John Banks; others can’t forgive the brutal way Brash rolled his “friend”, the former candidate and leader, Rodney Hide (who now seems like Winnie-the-Pooh in retrospect – even if he did get caught with his paw in the honey jar); and still others abhor the idea of being nudge-winked into pulling what the MMP purists see as a swifty on the voting system. There may even be one or two who quite like the pathologically unassuming National candidate, Paul Goldsmith, despite his virtually ordering them not to.
Because National has been getting such euphoric press for its polling, Epsom National voters have concluded they don’t need to break out the nose pegs this election.
Ackshully, there are two good reasons for reconsidering. One is it would provide National with a possibly vital safety margin. The other is it would foster the slim chance Act can be rehabilitated with its old followers, thus giving National extra coalition insurance for the future. The only reason there’s even a faint chance of the latter is the second-place ranking of former party president Catherine Isaac who, like former Act MP Patricia Schnauer, has the ability to communicate the party’s message with elegance, and without baggage.
However, National, like Epsom voters, remains functionally ambivalent on even these points of survival, because of the awful possibility of having to ackshully work with both the forensically mulish Brash and the cheerfully erratic Banks. Obliging Act with these two rampant would come at a future vote discount for National, possibly negating the strategic advantage.
So National-no-mates had better keep its fingers and toes discreetly crossed in case the secret gets out: it could win the game but not be awarded the trophy.