John Armstrong: Centrist spot much too precarious to be boring

Boring? United Future? How could anyone think that? Peter Dunne was more than a little peeved when a delegate at his party's election-year conference suggested people found United Future's commonsense centrism just a teensy bit dull.

Yet United Future is a tad like the dutiful, but somewhat predictable, spouse who finds his or her partner has run off with someone far more exciting but a lot less reliable.

Having contributed much to Government stability for the past three years - and made that its sales pitch - United Future is being rewarded by voters flocking to Winston Peters, of all people, instead.

Worse, to lose control of the centre is to lose the role of kingmaker.

Mr Peters' persona thus loomed large at the weekend conference, though United Future's MPs and officials avoided mentioning him by name and referred to NZ First as "that other party".

That was an acknowledgment that last year's vitriolic attack by Mr Dunne on NZ First, which had him reminding voters of the country's previous experience with an NZ First Government, may have been counter-productive.

Backing for NZ First has since climbed to around 8 to 10 per cent in the polls, while United Future still hovers around 2 per cent, well short of the nearly 7 per cent it won in 2002.

United Future's difficulty is that its very moderation means it cannot compete with Mr Peters' abrasive single-issue politics which has him taking positions too extreme for other parties to match.

Mr Peters knows his market - the elderly, blue-collar conservatives and apolitical Maori - and no one is going to shut him out of it.

United Future's more broad-based appeal instead has it trying to compete with the major parties - the classic example being tax.

In a clear bid to trump National's forthcoming policy release, Mr Dunne unveiled a massive $2.7 billion package of tax cuts, which would see a single-income family on $50,000 get an extra $54 a week.

But voters realise that tax rates are such an economic fundamental, any change will be either driven or vetoed by the major partner in a governing coalition. So a vote for National is a vote for tax cuts. But a vote for United Future could end up being a vote against tax cuts if that party again backs Labour.

United Future could exercise more brute leverage Peters-style, but that would only cut across its core message that it is a stabilising force in MMP politics.

Mr Dunne reassured the conference that the electoral pay-off for being a reliable support partner and giving Labour guaranteed support on confidence and supply motions will come during the election campaign.

Delegates did not quibble - their leader worked a miracle last time.

But in 2002, voters were not responding favourably to the party just because of its oft-mentioned commonsense approach to politics. National had gone AWOL in that campaign. Labour was always going to win. For centre-right voters, United Future was the fallback option to save Labour from having to get into bed with the Greens.

National's vote consequently collapsed. United Future was the beneficiary.

Sadly for United Future, a repeat is highly unlikely.

But it does have one advantage over NZ First. United Future is clearly the preferred coalition partner for Labour and National. If it looks as if Mr Peters might hold the balance of power, some voters may shift United Future's way to try to save the two big parties from having to deal with him.

At the weekend, Mr Dunne sought to lift morale by reminding delegates United Future was "on the brink of power". However, it is also on the brink of irrelevance. Hardly comfortable, but not boring either.