Boris Johnson's historic election victory today is the best possible outcome for both the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
There never was any prospect UK voters would elect a Labour majority government led by Jeremy Corbyn. The potential results were only ever a Conservative majority government or a continuationof shambolic minority government unable to deliver voters either Brexit or any coherent programme at all.
The latter would have fatally undermined public confidence in the democratic process with the risk the Brexit argument would have exploded out of Parliament and turned violent on the streets, with potentially catastrophic world-historic implications. Wisely or unwisely, UK voters have consistently backed Brexit and Brexit-supporting parties for several years now, and would not have tolerated their clear intentions being thwarted yet again.
Brexit will now go through at the end of next month and UK political debate can return to schools, hospitals, taxes, climate change and the like.
For New Zealand, the relatively pure Brexit deal that Johnson agreed with the EU allows us to negotiate and perhaps even finalise a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the UK as soon as next year.
We have always been an obvious natural partner to be the first country to secure a post-Brexit FTA.
Like the three other Five Eyes partners, the US, Canada and Australia, we share the English language, a common-law legal system and deep cultural and people-to-people links with what some older New Zealanders even a generation or two ago still called "home".
But, compared with the US, Canada and Australia, it would be far easier for the UK to do a quick deal with New Zealand given we are such a small and radically open economy.
Remember, no one in the UK bureaucracy has any experience conducting trade talks outside Europe, with that having been handled by Eurocrats in Brussels since 1973.
Indeed, the UK hired a New Zealander, Crawford Falconer, to be its chief trade negotiator in its newly established Department for International Trade (DIT) which only opened its doors in 2016.
There is no suggestion Falconer could favour New Zealand in his new job but it also can't hurt that he knows our top trade negotiators and even mentored some of them.
More importantly, the UK knows that New Zealand is good at negotiating FTAs with larger powers and also has experience at being first, as we were with China and also when we and Singapore signed an FTA that was the first glimmer in the eye of the huge Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To be blunt about it, as with China, the big thing we offer the UK's DIT is a chance to practice how to do FTAs with an ultimately unimportant economy but with a world-class trade-negotiations team.
This opportunity has been clearly on the radar of both Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and more especially Foreign Minister Winston Peters since they formed their Coalition.
Peters is a traditionalist and a rare supporter of Brexit on the international diplomatic circuit, even having a political relationship with the controversial Nigel Farage, of UK Independence Party and Brexit Party fame.
He has pushed his officials to make a UK-NZ FTA a major priority, expand public and traditional diplomacy in the UK, and even included the idea of a Closer Commonwealth Economic Relations deal in the Labour NZ First Coalition Agreement.
Ardern is surely a closet Remainer but has also been sure to invest in the UK relationship, visiting London twice since becoming Prime Minister with an FTA in mind. She established a good rapport with Theresa May but even more so with Johnson when they met in New York two and a half months ago.
Ardern and Johnson are both larger-than-life celebrity politicians and have a similar political style. Those in the room at the New York meeting say they got on famously, genuinely enjoying one another's company and having similar aspirations for the post-Brexit relationship.
After Brexit, Johnson needs to conclude an FTA with someone quickly in order to show his Government is willing and able to complete one. Ardern wouldn't mind getting it initialled before she faces New Zealand voters, probably in September.
There aren't many political lessons for New Zealand from today's election result. There is no overwhelming issue here to compare with Brexit. Nor is there anyone in our Parliament as sinister as Corbyn. He has taken his party to its worst defeat since 1935, worse even than 1983 when it was last led by an unreconstructed Marxist, albeit one who at least opposed Islamist and Irish terrorism.
Labour will take comfort that even a Government with a record of incompetence and failure can achieve a landslide if their leader can personify the nation, and joke and smile.
National might heed the lesson that snarling about absolutely everything and being unclear on key policy issues will not appeal to ordinary voters.
Both should take on board the danger of elites sneering at and thwarting the aspirations of the majority.
But these are points both main parties in New Zealand are already well aware of.
The best thing that both Labour and National can do in the wake of Johnson's triumph is unite around the cause of a quick FTA with the world's sixth largest economy, fifth biggest importer and third largest source of foreign direct investment. It's a prize for which domestic party politics should be put aside.
