KEY POINTS:
In the space of a single, rambling press conference, Gordon Copeland yesterday catapulted himself from political obscurity to political oblivion.
Punctual to a fault, he arrived a few minutes early, clutching copies of his press statement announcing he had walked out of Peter Dunne's United Future Party and was now an independent MP. It turned out he had turned up early to his own execution.
Mr Copeland is a nice chap. But this political neophyte was swimming way out of his depth as he took the rostrum in the Beehive theatrette.
In particular, Mr Copeland struggled to explain why, as a list MP who owes his seat in Parliament to United Future, he was suddenly justified in jumping ship - moreover, in jumping ship principally because he did not think the party should have exercised a conscience vote on Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill. He then topped off this amateur-hour performance later in the afternoon by missing the final vote on the bill.
Mr Copeland is not the first and certainly not the last politician to be entranced by the beguiling mirage of a Christian-based party breaking through the 5 per cent threshold and gaining representation in Parliament.
His stated task of reviving the old "Future New Zealand" label as a fresh political brand built around opposition to the Bradford bill sounds fine in principle but difficult in practice.
In the faction-ridden world of Christian politics, it will require a force of personality and political ability not immediately obvious in someone who phoned his leader at the last minute to tell him he was leaving, rather than doing so face-to-face.
For his part, Mr Dunne yesterday eschewed conducting a shouting match with his former colleague, instead turning the other cheek.
That was wise. Mr Copeland no longer matters. However, his walkout has ripped the lid off the uneasy, sometimes tense relationship between United Future's secular and Christian wings, with Mr Copeland claiming party members, including some who sit on the party's governing board, are poised to decamp with him
The last thing Mr Dunne needed was to provoke civil war within his own party on the eve of a Budget from which United Future is expected to emerge as a big winner.
In that regard, Mr Copeland's timing - driven by yesterday's final vote on the anti-smacking bill - could not have been worse.
Mr Copeland's one-way ticket to the political wilderness will not overshadow the Budget. But it will cloud Mr Dunne's efforts post-Budget to promote his party on the back of policy "trophies" negotiated from Labour.
It will be minor consolation that Mr Copeland still intends casting his parliamentary vote in favour of these United Future initiatives, along with the Budget as a whole.
That might seem to offer some comfort to the Prime Minister as well. However, Mr Copeland's departure from the ranks of those buttressing the Labour-led minority Government does not weaken Labour's grip on power as the Greens abstain on Budget and confidence motions.
Neither does it alter things to any huge degree when it comes to Labour getting legislation through the House. Labour lost its majority on legislation in February when Taito Phillip Field was ejected from its caucus.
Things are already difficult enough. Far more worrying for Labour, though, is the impression left by Mr Copeland's waka-jumping of a Government fragmenting at the edges.
Two previously Government-aligned MPs have become independents in the space of just three months. It is not a trend the Prime Minister will want to encourage.
