KEY POINTS:
It was one of those things you say when you are campaigning: "I only have a plan A" and Helen Clark used it plenty of times when asked what she would do it Labour lost.
We now know she had a Plan B all along and that was to resign immediately if Labour lost Government.
No one saw it coming. Perhaps I should have - having been at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney about a year ago when former Australian Prime Minister John Howard did exactly the same thing on election night.
Clark was right however. If she had not resigned last night, the Labour stories would have been about when she going to step down, not if, and whether her successor, almost certainly Phil Goff, was trying to prise her out quickly.
Clark's reference to sitting in the backbenches and giving total support to the new leader was a pointed reference to how former Labour leaders have dealt with defeat: Lange and Moore may not have deliberately set out to undermine their successors but they were not forces for the good in their caucuses.
Speaking on Agenda this morning Clark's friend and former Speaker Jonathan Hunt suggested she would stick around as MP for Mt Albert until something good came up - when we could expect a byelection.
Deputy Michael Cullen has also just announced he will step down as deputy which is fitting. If the party is considering a new leader, it should be considering the whole leadership package.
The party is in strong shape to handle electoral defeat.
National's kitchen cabinet will be meeting at John Key's Parnell home this afternoon to discuss the transition and how it negotiates with Act and the Maori Party.
National does not need the Maori Party to govern but as Tariana Turia indicated on Marae this morning, the Maori Party is not without some bargaining power. National will want the Maori Party as insurance against National having to rely all the time on Act.
I am picking that National will want a deal similar to Labour and the Greens last term, where the Maori Party will win policy concessions, guaranteed consultation for its commitment to abstain on confidence and supply.
Despite the Maori roll voters giving Labour its party vote, it should not be hard for the Maori Party to convince its hui to accept a deal with National if they can strike a decent one. The choice is not between Labour and National, but between some influence or no influence.
National will be strongly motivated to get a formal agreement with the Maori Party.
Act could be difficult. If the caucus were just Rodney Hide and Heather Roy, National could be confident of who they were dealing with.
But three shall we say quite unusual characters are joining the five-MP caucus, all strong-willed and all from a party that is more used to espousing conviction politics than the politics of compromise required in day to day Government.
Former Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas, the utterly driven Electoral Finance Act campaigner John Boscawen and Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman David Garrett form the majority in the new Act caucus.
National would be wise to spend as much time as it takes to get an agreeable arrangement with the Maori Party.
