KEY POINTS:
Steve Maharey's very unparliamentary "slip-of-the-tongue" expletive may say a lot about Steve Maharey. It says a lot more about how things have changed around Parliament since John Key took over as National's leader.
Maharey's lapse was a reminder that the target of his invective, Dr Jonathan Coleman, was ticked off by Key after the "cigar in the corporate box" affair last November.
Key had been leader for a matter of days. Such has been the subsequent improvement in self-discipline in National's caucus that Key has not had to tick off anyone else since.
Labour could always rely on National MPs regularly shooting the party in the foot as it stumbled from one bout of leadership speculation to the next. The Government got frequent respite - often when it needed it. No longer.
National had long realised that Oppositions start looking like governments-in-waiting only when they are united and disciplined. The theory has finally been put into practice.
Some blunt talk up and down the factionalised front bench after Don Brash's resignation forced Bill English into rapprochement with Key. They not only discovered they could work together, but that they complemented each other. They realised they even might quite like each other.
The resulting benefits to National of this leader-deputy pairing cannot be exaggerated. The caucus started to focus outwards instead of inwards. Key picked up the baton Brash had dropped in the House. National began putting more pressure on Labour more often on more fronts. Fortress Clark no longer looks so formidable.
But the buoyancy is tempered with realism.
Key has huge respect for Clark's political skills. He repeatedly reminds his caucus that unity is paramount, and that his MPs must work even harder. Even then, he warns them that National faces a long, long haul to gain the Government benches.
An averaging of recent polls may have National rating about 5 percentage points ahead of Labour. But Labour has the Greens. National's natural coalition partners will offer up only a handful of MPs at best.
That requires National to maximise its vote. For Key it is a simple numbers game. You get the most votes by broadening your support, but without watering down policy so much that you lose your core conservative supporters.
Hence National's considered shift centrewards. English's backroom job is to ensure the policy strikes the required balance, but still has substance. Key's job is to market the result.
Labour's fallback option is to persuade voters that National's leader and deputy harbour enmity towards each other, and that Key is the lightweight and English is the real leader.
Not surprisingly, the tactic is not working. It isn't true.
