John Armstrong: Marooned on the right

Keep your arguments in-house. Don't give your opponents the slightest opportunity to portray you as divided or unstable.

That is a golden rule of MMP politics - as a despairing Matt Robson pointedly reminded the Greens a couple of weeks ago after they castigated Labour for being tired, rudderless and purely poll-driven.

The Progressive party MP should not have worried. This week Richard Prebble showed that infighting is not solely the preserve of the centre-left.

In saying Don Brash had "lost control" of National's caucus and senior National MPs were undermining him, Prebble illustrated another golden rule - it is easy to generate headlines at your allies' expense.

One awkward question was left unanswered, however, amidst the subsequent bickering between National and Act: what possible advantage accrued to Act from all this?

Prebble has probably obliterated the last vestiges of sympathy National MPs feel towards Act's plight. He has probably killed off what little chance there was of National agreeing to a last-minute electoral accommodation to negate the need for Act to pass the 5 per cent threshold.

He provided a diversion at the very moment the Government is showing signs of wobbling under sustained Opposition pressure.

But Prebble does not need to be told all that. And he is long enough in the political tooth to know a minor bit of sniping is hardly going to give Act the much-needed traction it craves to lift its miserable 2 per cent poll rating. So what was his game?

It certainly bore the hallmarks of a former leader with nothing much to lose inadvertently causing trouble by talking over the head of the current leader. And, within Act, Prebble's remarks have been variously described as "feral" and "mischievous".

Yet no-one - including Rodney Hide - had a problem with Prebble stamping on National's toes.

For what Prebble was really saying was that National is still too self-absorbed, still too fuzzy about what it stands for and, consequently, still somewhat directionless.

His remarks are the most vivid pointer yet to the strategic rethink within Act late last year dubbed "Operation Break Out".

The code-name not only reflects Act's intention to "break out" of its poll slump. It is also trying to eradicate the impression it is a National Party "cling-on" - an impression it accentuated by being what one Act insider describes as too much "the Don Brash fan club".

Observing National's complacent meandering through the latter half of last year, Act concluded National is not going to mount an effective challenge to Labour in election year. If anything, Brash's mishandling of Katherine Rich following his Orewa speech on welfare reform has confirmed that view.

The danger for Act lies in remaining hostage to National's fortunes. If National does not look like it is going to win the election, then Act, marooned on National's right flank, is doomed to irrelevancy. Why vote for a party which can only deal with National when National will not form the next Government?

That was Act's fate in 2002. It still got back into Parliament because National's vote was in serious decline - the case also in the two previous elections fought by Act. This year - and for the first time in its history - Act is competing against a much stronger National "brand" as personified by Brash.

Act accepts National will do much better than it did in 2002, but it is still not confident National is going to perform well enough for the electorate to rate it as likely to head off Labour. And while Brash may yet be the surprise star of the election campaign, Act simply cannot afford to gamble its future on that happening. It is not going to be the victim of National's failings.

Act is cutting itself adrift. It is no longer worried about offending National. Self-preservation is the absolute priority.

However Act has deeper reason for its frustration with National - one which further explains the rationale for Operation Break Out.

Act would back a National-led Government. It has no option. However, it believes its absence of choice imposes some obligations on National, as the major party in any centre-right government, to assure voters such a government is not only feasible, it would be competent and, above all, stable.

Seven months out from the election, National is silent on these matters.

Voters have not even the foggiest notion of how a National-Act Government would function. There is no sense of how NZ First or United Future fit into the equation.

The result? The centre-right does not look like it is ready to rule, whereas the centre-left can point to six years of pretty stable Government. That gives Labour a massive advantage - as if it did not have advantage enough already.

National, however, will simply assume it can take Act's support for granted. Its far bigger headache is having to negotiate with NZ First. More than likely, Winston Peters would baulk at a three-way coalition deal with Act, which would be relegated to being a support partner. So, once again, irrelevance beckons for Act.

Consumed by the search for relevance, Act's tacticians are now hunting for issues which will "connect" with voters and which can be showcased at Act's annual conference in a fortnight's time.

To rebuild a separate identity for itself, Hide is also trying to jolt perceptions of Act as the "Junior National Party" by referring to Act as the "Workers' Party".

Act's worry is that the coming election campaign will be portrayed by the media as a two-horse race between Brash and Clark, thus shutting out minor parties by pigeonholing them as being on one side or the other. Act is now intent on defying such categorisation. It will stop talking about how it is needed in Parliament to provide the ideological backbone for a Brash-led Government which would otherwise capitulate to unhealthy pragmatism.

Act will instead argue more widely that it is needed in Parliament for other reasons, such as being the only party with the credible track record of holding governments to account - as shown by Ken Shirley's drip-feeding of allegations of financial irregularities at the tertiary institute Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

Attacking National holus-bolus remains the easiest means for Act to differentiate itself. But that will reek of desperation. It will thus be avoided. The measure of Act's holding its nerve, however, will be its continued resisting of such temptation.