Election 2023: Heather du Plessis-Allan - Winston Peters is the political story of our lifetimes

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

OPINION:

For all of his faults - and there are many - Winston Peters really is remarkable.

Somehow, he defies the odds and manages to keep coming back like a bad Christmas movie.

Winston is not the story of this election campaign. Winston is the political story of our lifetimes.

In decades to come, long after we’re all dead, political science students at universities will still be studying Winston’s career and drawing lessons from it.

The campaign of 2023 will be unremarkable in that long career. It will be just another example, like all the others, of Winston doing that thing again where he charms voters into forgetting how cross they were at him before.

But that sentence doesn’t do his political story justice. He doesn’t just charm voters. That’s not his only skill. He has an arsenal of skills.

Somehow, he sniffs a political trend before anyone else. This election, he sniffed the winds of discontent blowing up from the Parliamentary protest and walked through a crowd no one else would.

He seizes opportunities and goes for it like no one else. This election, the opportunity was Chris Luxon ruling him in. Winston was already building a head of steam and was closing in on 5 per cent by himself. But when the Nats gave him the tiniest leg up, he jumped right over that fence and started sprinting to the finish line.

And somehow, somewhere along the line, he makes everyone’s mum forget how angry she was when he picked Jacinda over Bill and Jim over Helen and they just love him all over again.

To illustrate how remarkable that is, compare NZ First to Act. In the last week of this campaign some polls had Winston only 2-3 percentage points behind David Seymour’s party. But Act had been working for three years for that level of support. It had pumped out carefully considered policy documents and fully costed alternative budgets year after year. Seymour had honed his arguments and debated his positions until he knew them inside out.

Winston rocked up in the last few months, smiled, made up policies as he went and got within touching distance of Act’s three years of hard work. That is the skill and mastery of Winston Peters.

I could admonish voters for being so easily seduced by a handsome rogue with a nice smile. I could lament the triumph - once again - of personality over policy. But that’s not fair on voters or on Winston.

We’re all adults. Most of us are smart enough to hold down jobs and drive cars. When voters vote for Winston, they know what they’re doing.

Pretending that Winston’s voters are stupid or racist or any other pejorative thrown at them is not fair on Winston. He wins them over time and time again, not because they’re idiots, but because he’s good at it.

I’m not saying he’s good for New Zealand. And I’m not saying he’s what this country needs right now.

But Winston is the greatest politician of his generation. And the generation below that. And the one below that. He will remain the greatest politician of our lifetimes until someone else comes along who can convince jilted voters to love him election after election.