National knows just what it has to do: Kill off NZ First

In this country, there are only three "real" political parties of any significance.

Because politics is all over the news and popular culture, people tend to think it is easy.

But like everything, the practice of politics is harder than it looks.

If you put your average citizen in the same spotlight, do you think they’d outperform the average Government minister? What about the least media-adept Government minister?

I doubt it.

In later years, one staple of the backseat drivers has been to criticise National for not doing more to cultivate support parties.

Ever since ACT became the Epsom Party, people have been telling the party to work on building up its potential coalition partners.

The party needs more ‘‘mates’’ in Parliament, the argument goes.

And, in fairness, this is a genuine problem for National. In the 2008 election, its various support partners won 7 per cent of the vote and held eleven seats. In 2011, they won just over 4 per cent and won five seats.

In 2014, it was just over 2 per cent and four seats.

In this year’s election, parties willing to support it won less than 2 per cent of the vote and just one seat.

National had a relative majority but not enough allies to drag it over the line.

Selection of the Government was then thrown to Winston Peters and the smoke-filled rooms.

As we all know, National did not prevail in the backroom dealing.

So what does National do? The Greens are now vassals of the Labour Party and NZ First is hardly likely to swap sides in 2020. Does it try to bolster ACT or reinvigorate the Maori Party?

It’s hard to see what it could do in that space that it wasn’t already doing.

A nice, new stable party on the Right would be good if it somehow knew how to tap into 5 to 10 per cent of the voters and was totally devoid of crazies, egotists and oddballs who would do more harm than good.

Should National focus its energies on midwifing such a party into existence? Sure. Then maybe it could turn its attention to transforming lead into gold, resurrecting the moa and discovering the lost city of Atlantis.

Back in the real world, viable political parties have always been difficult to create and maintain. In an era of declining civic participation, it’s really hard to get people to join and volunteer time and money for anything.

So it’s not surprising that, in recent years, new parties have tended to be personality cults centred around established politicians or wealthy outsiders.

In this country, there are only three ‘‘real’’ political parties of any significance. They are Labour, National and the Greens.

By that, I mean that these are the three viable organisations seeking to win and hold political power for purposes other than the glorification of their leader.

A few years back, I wrote a piece that suggested that Unitedfuture seemed like little more than a vehicle for the chameleonic Peter Dunne.

The then Minister of Internal Affairs must have seen it somehow, because he wrote a letter to the Marlborough Express about it. The letter blended personal viciousness and fury with anodyne waffle in a truly remarkable way.

Blasting me as a ‘‘nonentity columnist’’, Dunne complained that my ‘‘ignorance about Unitedfuture’’ was ‘‘breathtaking in its scope’’.

He claimed that the party had the most detailed policy platform of any party.

He then went on, at length, to describe how Unitedfuture stood for ‘‘liberal democracy’’, ‘‘vibrant communities’’ and ‘‘the best of opportunities’’.

But the zeal for these vague convictions has not proved to be all that enduring.

Worried that he was going to lose his seat, Dunne threw in the towel in on his career on August 14 this year.

Within three months, Unitedfuture announced it would be dissolved.

Does anyone believe that NZ First will long survive after Winston Peters hangs up his pinstripes for good?

Parts of the media will talk up Shane Jones as a successor (I mean, they always do).

But for most us, NZ First is Winston Peters and Winston Peters is NZ First.

With that in mind, National should do what it can to bring about the demise of that party. This shouldn’t be too hard. When NZ First has agreed to support a Government in the past, it has always failed to reach 5 per cent in the following election.

Populists tend to disappoint when it comes time to walk the talk. This time will be no different.

As far as goals go, it’s certainly more achievable than somehow inventing and then controlling a new allied political movement.

And, funnily enough, taking NZ First out is reported to have been National’s strategy in the latter part of the 2017 campaign.

Why, it’s almost as if they knew what they were doing...