Toby Manhire: Revealed: the leaked election strategy emails

John Key plays beer pong at the Big Gay Out. Photo / Dean Purcell

TO: >NAT-INT-PARL<

RE: STRATEGY UPDATE

Listen, really good week. Excellent. Eyes on the prize. Battered them in the House, flattened them in the field. JK: brilliant work with the man-queens and the beer-pong on Sunday, really top leadership, and a merciful distraction, if I may say, from the unsavoury off-piste episode with the jacket-and-castle attack on that woman from the Greens. Not naming any names, but that was highly irregular, about as useful, Judith, as Old Man Dalton geriatrically grinding on a state-of-the-art catamaran, according to focus groups. Simple stuff.

You'll no doubt have noticed the allegations the boss is a shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement. Hold the line here. Focus groups indicate that a clear majority of National voters are against shapeshifting reptilian aliens ushering humanity towards enslavement. The whole subject is out of bounds and not to be discussed under any circumstances, apart from when the Prime Minister is asked how he knows that Winston Peters visited the Dotcom mansion three times.

Speaking of which, keep pushing those devil-beasts at the Dotcom mansion narratives. Repeat "dirty-deal-Dotcom-extradition" till you're rosette-blue in the face. That will turn it into a fact. And remember, their deals are dirtier than ours, because our deals aren't dirty at all because of MMP and so on.

Operation Tricky (see last bulletin) meanwhile continues. Just don't overdo it. The focus groups thought the Revenue Minister "stank the place out a bit" by calling Mr Cunliffe tricky three hundred times in a five-minute speech. We don't want the enemy to twig that calling them tricky is our core electoral strategy.

In summary, and say after me: Hardworking families Dotcom mansion dirty extradition ordinary New Zealanders tricky Labour fruitloop Greenies return to surplus in 2014. Should get us over the line. Hands in the middle!

All due respect

Steven

TO: >LAB-CAUCUS-LOYAL<

RE: RE: RE: FW: RE: PROJECT 2014 UPDATE

When we said you needed to come across as the kind of man who could drink John Key under the table, DC, we didn't mean you should say out loud that you could drink John Key under the table. Not a very bloody good look while that boozed bloody cricketer is staggering all over the TV news.

Everything comes back to the core strategy and the core strategy is this: they're arrogant. Arrogant, arrogant, arrogant. That should get us over the line.

Can someone quietly look into whether there is any truth in these reptilian alien claims? If John Key were to be a reptilian alien would that play better with the left or the centre? What's our line on the latest Air NZ safety video? On the traffic-light squeegitsus?

Have we asked the Prime Minister if he stands by all his statements? Is the gaffer tape holding on Goffy over that trade deal? What's our view on Shirley Temple? Can we leverage the Danish giraffe execution scandal? That seemed kind of arrogant.

Kia ora, Shane, on the supermarket fatwa. Watching you at work, I was reminded of Katy Perry's visceral energy in her hit single Roar. You used so many terrifying words, invented some new ones, and not even once did you say "etcetera". David S did some excellent nodding, too.

Must run. Just quickly: avoid the corporate boxes at the Nines. Avoid the wacky weed at Eminem. Tweet something soppy from the Lantern Festival. Social media is the future. And we need to get our ducks in a row on visits to the Dotcom mansion.

Helen

TO: >GREEN-PARTY-TEAM-COLLECTIVE<

RE: Forward together

You guys are the best. Don't want to harsh anyone's buzz but please try to resist going after Mr Key on the reptile alien allegations. We have many valuable supporters among the lizard community. And we really need to get our ducks in a row on visits to the Dotcom mansion.

Kia kaha,

Clint and the collective

TO: >NZFIRST-CAUCUS-PLS-DELETE-HORAN<

RE: Smashing the bastards

You tell me: who do they think they are, these Johnny-come-lately so-called journalists, evacuating their infant bowels all over the Right Honourable sultan of the New Zealand First starship? That's right. That's right. Ha!

Why should I be obliged to feed these upstarts with details about whether or not I've ascended that mesmerising, undulating driveway up to Kim's, whether I've reclined in an opulent European leather armchair, sipped on the finest single malts, lost myself in a limited-edition Ecuadorean Habano, and raised my hands in the air to contemporary R&B-tinged Teutonic techno chart-toppers? Bunch of [REDACTED], the lot of them.

If you need anything else, I'll be at the Parrot.

The Boss

TO: UNITED-FUTURE-MPS-ALL

RE: Election planning

Dear caucus. Still no invite from KDC but doesn't matter, obviously wouldn't go anyway. Chin up. Love you.

The Honourable Peter Dunne MP