Hats off to the old gambler
You know things are getting back to normal when Winston Peters breaks coalition rank and starts agitating for trans-Tasman travel, and for the Government to go straight to level 1. The six states of Australia aren’t on the same page with their coronavirus strategies, infections and border controls, yet Winston’s judgment is chocks away?
Just as we are about to be in the box seat of being virtually pristine and virus-free, the old gambler does his classic Kenny Rogers number to show he knows ‘‘when to hold ‘em, knows when to fold ‘em’’. Jacinda takes his playbook insurrection in her stride, but could be forgiven for singing her own Kenny ballad, ‘‘You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille’’.
Believing himself to be quite the Shiva – both the creator of Jacinda and now potentially her destroyer –Winston breaks away to do election business trying to keep NZ First in play and get it up to the 5 per cent threshold of political viability.
His sidekick Shane Jones, who used to wear a red baseball cap that said Make New Zealand Great Again, has been flirting outrageously with new National Party leader Todd Muller, he who also has a penchant for rabid red baseball caps.
The loaded millinery message on display proved toxic, and the unholy roller of Simon Bridges has been found wanting in leadership skills and woefully devoid of any grand master flash business plan. The same old, same old new lineup of the Nats’ front bench smacks of bland social conservatism, with no radical solutions to get the country out of the rough.
For weeks the nation has bought into the story of staying in lock-step with the Government on eliminating Covid-19, and just at the sharp end of holding fast, Winston exploits small-business frustrations and bolts for separatism to show a point of difference.
New Zealand has enjoyed basking in global glory and being the envy of other countries still labouring under lockdown, and may find Winston’s betrayal of the coalition and his Covid-19 leverages to be both confusing and disloyal to the greater good.
It’s all about perception. Practising social distancing from your coalition partner in times like this is a risky option. Excuse me, but didn’t we all agree to sing from the same hymn sheet and see this out to the bitter end? And that includes even the scattiest of politicians.
Four months out from the election and you can feel the churn as the National Party sets up a black ops intelligence unit to dig the dirt on its political opponents.
The G-Unit, aka Gerry Brownlee, denies that the intel group has any dark materials to it, but the very mention of it brings back unsavoury memories of 2014 and the dirty politics of that election. Surely, there’s no disputing that the signature of lobbyist and strategist Matthew Hooton, the party’s Rasputin, is behind all of this?
Todd Muller’s un-tight 55 has been leaking, and a party that once prided itself on discipline is hellbent on settling old scores to, Psycho-style, stab wildly through the arras.
The debacle about Paul Goldsmith’s alleged Nga¯ ti Porou provenance in the corridors of Parliament will go down in history as one of the great setpiece stand-up political comedy acts of all time.
National Party MPs bouncing off corridor walls to chime in with a miasma of misspeak made a mockery of the long-held belief that the Nats have a hardline adherence to the party faithful. If Muller can’t stop that community spread, he won’t last till September.