National’s usual route back to power, 1975 excepted, is to let Labour dig its grave and push it in.
The assumption is that National, as a broader-spectrum party, is closer to ordinary folk and therefore can more often command the centre and so a majority, while Labour in power veers into minority pursuits.
Three years ago senior National ministers were gloating that their alliance with Winston Peters had blocked Labour off from the centre. But actually Mr Peters’ betrayal of his supporters’ expectations – that he would eject National and its economic programme, not prop both up – had opened up space in the centre for Labour.
All new governments look pleased with themselves. This one, reciting a liturgy of fairness, frugality and (intra-coalition) fraternity, is almost incandescent.
It will even relish today’s debate on the tax rise because it is sure it has the moral high ground. As one former minister said this week, there is little point attacking it for the next few months because hardly anyone will hear.
Where is the faultline the 1980s revolution opened up in politics? Between Labour and the Alliance. That is the underlying reason why they agreed midyear the coalition agreement could be about only process, not policy.
Monday’s skimpy “peace in our time” document is as unusual in its lack of even a general programme as was the National-New Zealand First coalition’s doomed attempt to tie everything down.
Helen Clark has a couple of economically comfortable years ahead, forecasters say. That, some Nationalists are pondering ruefully, might usefully fund a Labour-Alliance re-election spendup in 2002.
But what happens in the economy this parliamentary term has been mostly determined by events in the term just ended. Underlying the boomlet ahead are deeper issues. What happens when United States consumers stop spending and we still haven’t got to the haven of the “knowledge economy” – and what is that anyway?
The Greens stole the campaign. Written off a year ago, struggling all year to break 2 per cent, they are now looking likely to be back in Parliament in greater numbers.
In part this was others’ doing. The genetically modified foods scare was a godsend. Helen Clark, needing an insurance policy, signalled loudly to her supporters to give co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons the Coromandel electorate seat. Jenny Shipley blundered into Coromandel and gave the green bus another shove.
The most remarkable element in this election is the unremarkability that the choice of Prime Minister is between two women.
This may be a minor subterranean factor in the rise of the flank parties — some men seeking a man to vote for. But in the media there is no gee-whizz about this extremely rare factor. It seems the country has got used to it.
Is Richard Prebble punching above his weight? He’s acting like a big boy when his party is a littl’un. What’s the game?
On Monday, as Labour basked in the glow of the Waikato University survey’s stratospheric figures and other pollsters were unofficially reporting a lift for Labour over the weekend and wondering whether that was a bandwagon off the Waikato figures, Mr Prebble tried a little poll-bandwagoning of his own.
The flank parties are scooping up party support and leaving National and Labour with an oversupply of electorate support. Both are now trying to neutralise that.
You would expect some excess because the big old parties hold almost all the electorates, a lifetime of an electorate-only choice has ingrained voting habits and incumbents attract cross-party support that does not reflect true party loyalties. Nevertheless, in 1996 National’s two votes were almost identical. Labour’s electorate excess was 2.9 per cent.
What is this election really about, deep down? “Outsiders” and how to make them “insiders”. The instability of our politics of the past 15 years has a lot to do with that.
In the old politics you could walk down a street and roughly pick its political complexion. While individual voters could not be typecast in this way, socioeconomic status was not a bad general guide to choice between the two big parties.