‘‘Labour is focus-grouping soft National supporters, those former Key voters who voted for Labour in 2020. This group has been driving the Government’s political strategy for some time.’’

Years ago, when John Key’s Government was ascendant, with full-spectrum control over the opposition and media, I was asked how best to influence Key’s policy direction. My reply: ‘‘Get your people into National’s focus groups.’’

While survey research will tell a party what percentage of people favour this or that policy or leader, focus groups help them understand why. They become a crucial input into how parties frame a policy, themselves and their opponents.

That said, one can no more imagine Micky Savage or Norm Kirk relying upon focus group data than contemporary leaders ignoring it. Politics has become ever more professionalised, with a double serving of marketing as the main course.

Modern politics can be viewed as the triumph of marketing. The 1990s saw Bill Clinton’s ‘‘triangulation’’ and Tony Blair’s ‘‘Cool Brittania’’ succeed politically. Constant polling and centrist positioning with rhetorical palaver to camouflage inherent ideological contradictions became the template.

Terms like branding, authenticity, differentiation, penetration and segmentation, whether we like them or not, are now an integral part of our political language.

Some may see this as greater sophistication. It is. Others might think it cynical. It is.

I’m ambivalent. While I nostalgically crave the spontaneity of Big Norm walking hand-in-hand with a young Ma¯ ori boy on Waitangi Day, or David Lange’s absurdist rhetoric, that magic is lost.

So I accept the algorithm, not least because it’s not going away while people have such little regard for their own privacy.

Turning then to the Government’s public sector pay freeze announcement, it came out of nowhere. Given the furious reaction, we can rule out a long