‘‘If Peters and National are to spend the next nine months squabbling like toddlers in a sandpit, voters won’t easily swallow an about-face d´etente.’’

Winston Peters and the National Party . . . when I told a friend I was planning to write about their inevitable preelection dance, he gave an exasperated snort.

‘‘It’s so boring,’’ he complained. ‘‘You people write about it all the time and nothing ever changes and nobody cares.’’

It’s a fair point. Since the inception of MMP, the tug of will-he-won’t-he has filled more column inches than it really should.

But is there a chance Simon Bridges could save us from this triennial soap opera and rule out a deal?

The Opposition leader will soon deliver a ‘‘State of the Nation’’ speech, foreshadowing his party’s election campaign. There is every reason for him to give a clear signal that he would not have Peters in his Cabinet.

There is a long history of personal animosity between the two, stretching back to 2008 when Bridges stood against the NZ First leader in Tauranga. Peters, ousted at the previous election, desperately needed to win back the seat to return to Parliament and his failure to do so against Bridges forced him into political exile for the following three years.

National is pragmatic enough to forget, if not forgive, Peters’ bad-faith bargaining during the 2017 negotiations over power-sharing.

But professional grudge-holder Peters can’t seem to let the acrimony go, suing former National ministers over a leak, ungraciously baiting Paula Bennett over a bunch of flowers and mocking the party as a ‘‘leaderless rabble’’.

If Peters and National are to spend the next nine months squabbling like toddlers in a sandpit, voters won’t easily swallow an about-face de´ tente.

Bridges could get lucky. There’s every chance that NZ First will fall victim to the MMP curse: small parties that get into bed with big ones are usually swept out of power.

But he would be unwise to count on this. Peters has defied many a pundit’s crystal ball, and underestimating him is unwise.

There is chatter of an insurance policy: that NZ First will stand Shane Jones in Northland, to try and unseat incumbent Matt King in a rehash of the 2015 by-election.

National shouldn’t be worried – the issues when they were defeated five years ago were very specific to that contest. And Jones has failed to win any constituency he has campaigned in.

Even a ‘‘dirty deal’’ with Labour is unlikely to get him over the line. Being used as a pawn to ensure NZ First’s survival is unlikely to appeal to voters in an electorate facing many problems.

Freezing out Peters is a gamble that paid off for Sir John Key a decade ago. But then Peters was already down, and counted out, by the Owen Glenn donations scandal. Today, he is bloodied, but not yet fatally wounded, by a scandal over the mysterious NZ First Foundation.

Key was also clever in the words he chose: ruling out Peters, but not his party. A National-led government in coalition with NZ First, but without Peters as a minister, is hard to imagine.

Better to rip off the sticking plaster, and prevent NZ First exploiting their position as kingmaker. It sends a strong message to centre-right voters that a tick for National is the only way to change the government.

And it would save us all from an entire year of Peters’ tiresome equivocations.

Peters has defied many a pundit’s crystal ball, and underestimating him is unwise.