Heather du Plessis-Allan: Election 2023: National’s strategy puts Winston Peters in the pound seats

When you throw Winston Peters a lifeline he boards your boat, charms the sailors and commandeers the vessel, says Heather du Plessis-Allan. Photo / Warren Buckland

OPINION

The National Party must be regretting their Winston strategy. It hasn’t worked. Instead, it’s put Winston Peters exactly where he wants to be: choosing the next government. Again.

The Nats should’ve ruled him out when media first started asking that question. Chances are, that would’ve starved him of votes, which would have made him irrelevant and kept him out of the news.

But they didn’t rule him out, either because they wanted him as insurance just in case they couldn’t quite make it with just Act, or because - the popular theory goes - they wanted him to keep cleaving votes off Labour.

That second strategy was like threading a needle while running: very bloody hard to get exactly right. It relied on NZ First stealing just enough voters from Labour to keep them out of government, but not enough for Winston to hit 5 per cent and make it back into Parliament himself.

It was always high risk and it was always going to fail because it’s Winston. When you throw Winston a lifeline he boards your boat, charms the sailors and commandeers the vessel.

By the time National Party leader Chris Luxon released that video basically begging voters not to vote for Winston, it was too late. Winston was already on a roll. His polls kept climbing.

This week’s 1News-Verian poll has confirmed National and Act’s second worst possible outcome, which is that they can’t possibly form a government without Winston.

They can console themselves that at least it’s not the first worst possible outcome, which would be Winston in a true kingmaker position like he was in 2017 where he gets to pick who becomes Prime Minister.

He can’t really choose this time. He can’t re-install Labour given how many times he’s categorically promised not to.

But he can play games, which is a hard-learned fact for anyone who lived through the two months of post-election negotiations in 1996.

And National has given Winston more than enough reason to play games if he’s in that kind of mood this year.

At every opportunity in the last two weeks, senior National Party MPs have repeated that they really don’t want to have to work with Winston. He’s their last resort. He’s not their preference.

Being badmouthed in the media for two weeks would irritate anyone. Winston’s not just anyone. He’s the most epic grudge holder. Part of his motivation for installing Jacinda Ardern in 2017 was because of a 26-year grudge against her opponent Bill English.

There is still a chance the Nats and Act will be spared having to do the Winston dance if there is a dramatic collapse in the left bloc’s support on election night. It’s possible. It happened to National in 2020. In the fortnight before the election, they were consistently polling in the 30s. On election night the vote came in at just over 25 per cent. National voters abandoned the party because it was pointless voting for them or voting at all.

Labour is prone this election given their voters’ disappointment at the party torching its own soul in the policy bonfire. The voters might not even turn up to vote.

If that happens, National and Act may just have enough to scrape a majority together. But, a slim majority is never smart. MPs do stupid things or quit, putting it at risk.

Which brings us to the third worst option for National and Act: not needing Winston but calling him up anyway, for that insurance.

It doesn’t feel like National’s best option exists. There doesn’t seem to be any option without Winston anymore.

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive, Newstalk ZB, 4pm-7pm, weekdays.