Matt McCarten: Bungling Brash buoyed but unlikely to hold on to his job

There's something nasty seeping through the body politic. It's gone far enough now that I sense it's taken on a permanency.

I wonder if that's what Helen Clark was referring to when she accused Don Brash of being cancerous and corrosive.

The smear campaigns and the sinister role of the Exclusive Brethren sect are disturbing. It does seem to have started when Brash used his Orewa speech to put the boot into Maori.

Winston Peters used to say similar things, but always with a twinkle in his eye and a broad smile. It was hard to believe he really meant it.

Brash is, of course, a different beast. When he says outrageous things you know he really does believe them. An ideologue without a sense of humour is a scary thing.

Labour's bully-boy twins Trevor Mallard and David Benson-Pope firing warning shots over Brash about his alleged affair with his Business Roundtable patron, in the short term, seems to have backfired.

It seems the more bungling that Brash does the more popular he becomes. Maybe it's the Kiwi love of the underdog that's getting him off the hook. For now, the more mess-ups he makes the higher up the polls he goes.

The dirty underground campaign about the sexuality of Clark's husband Peter Davis raised its ugly head again. It seems the public thinks Clark had something to do with Brash's zipper predicament and she and her party got a doing-over in the polls. It must be galling to Clark, as her opponents have smeared Davis and her when they haven't done anything wrong yet Brash soars in the polls when we all know he was up to no good.

Life just isn't fair.

Of course, Brash's remarkable good fortune won't last but it has delayed the John Key and Bill English bids for his job. However, Brash's accident-prone behaviour won't protect him the closer it gets to the election.

I still contend that National can't beat Labour while Brash leads them and the insiders know it.

But Clark's refusal to accept that there was anything wrong with spending public money on her campaign is the real reason for her fall from grace. The longer it goes on the deeper in the mire her party is getting. There is almost no face-saving way out for her.

The other parties who initially defended their decisions to use parliamentary funds on their campaigns have all bailed out.

Labour is left in the respondent's dock with only Peter Dunne as fellow defender. It makes me wonder how much United Future has spent.

Add in Taito Phillip Field to Labour's woes and things aren't looking good.

The claim this week by Tariana Turia that the Maori Party was promised $250,000 to back Labour after the last election doesn't help either. I've no doubt someone did promise it but I'm also sure it was big-noting by some nobody rather than a serious offer by someone of means. For one thing, if it was serious you'd be expecting at least a couple of million each MP.

The Maori Party needs to come clean and tell the cops who it is. There is something sweet about the Maori Party when it gets genuinely shocked that hucksters have approached it offering money for political ends.

Turia conceding this week that Brash might actually mean what he says in public about Maori is disarming. I thought everyone in the country knows that Brash really does believe Maori are just brown Pakeha.

The smart ones in the National Party must now realise the Maori Party cancelling dinner dates with Brash is probably a sign the Maori Party has given up on National while Brash is there. This will not go unnoticed by the number crunchers.

The only two potential allies left for National under Brash are Act and United Future. Unfortunately for National, both of these parties consistently rate around 1 per cent. This means, despite National's polling, it will not become Government. It's clear to any fool that it's the Maori Party, or a combination of the Maori Party with the Greens, that will determine the next Government.

Brash and his advisers couldn't count last election, and by burning off the Maori Party he is ensuring Labour gets a fourth term.

It's an open secret Maori like English. Therefore his supporters will bide their time and wait to see whether the penny drops in their caucus that Brash can't deliver a National Government.

Frankly, I can't understand why Brash thinks offending Maori has any electoral gain anyway. New Zealanders who feel the same way that he does on Maori are already voting for him and won't desert him no matter what. What he needs to do is make sure he has electoral options.

Even a cursory analysis of recent polls show that when National gains support it's because it's taking votes off the centre-right parties and Labour sheds support not to the right but to the Greens and the Maori Party. So, even if polls stay as they are (and they won't) Brash still won't beat Clark in an election.

I know Labour will be feeling under siege at the moment but closer analysis suggests it is still positioned to win a fourth term.

But it does need to sort out the small matter of using the public's money to fund its last campaign - because if it doesn't, it won't have a show next election.