While the National Party whips were counting the votes for Simon Bridges after the second ballot in their super secret caucus yesterday they were also counting themselves out of the next election.
They truly sealed that fate when they did the head count for Paula Bennett over Judith Collins for the deputy's job. The party's MPs have ignored, likely at their peril, the wishes of their rank and file supporters who were solidly behind Collins. And they can kiss goodbye to Winston Peters with Bennett part of the mix.
The new leader is even more morally conservative than Bill English, so when he talks about generational change he's simply talking about his 41 years, not about where his head is.
National's rock solid support, which has been hovering around the mid-40s, will soon become sand through the hourglass. The glass will be set at between a year and 18 months when the party will be spooked by the falling opinion polls, and the vultures - and as we've seen by this contest there are plenty of them - will start circling.
Bridges' generational change then is about as solid as his claims to his Maori heritage and that of his deputy, neither of whom have made much of it in their rise up through the ranks; not altogether surprising considering their new leader is just three sixteenths Maori and Bennett's grandmother was half-Maori.