Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Winston's rejection of Chippy is more significant than we realise

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

I think Winston Peters ruling out ever going into coalition with Chippy after the next election is actually more significant than many people will realize.

Because Winnie was actually Chippy's only credible path back to being prime minister again. Without Winnie, Chippy is completely stuffed, because the alternatives are not real options.

The alternatives are:

One - being in a coalition with a couple of loony parties, which centre voters are absolutely not going to go for. So you can forget about that.

The other is that Labour is returned as a majority Government again, which is, after what happened last time, not going to happen for a very long time again.

So basically, there is no way back for Chippy. He will not be Prime Minister after 2026, if ever.

Now a lot of people would say to me at this juncture - well of course not, National were always going to win the next election anyway, so this is just a completely spurious argument.

But I would say to you is - Labour's chances are actually a little bit better than you might think, because what we have right now is hardly a wildly popular Government.

These guys were elected, remember, telling us they were going to turn this economy around. 18 months later, they have not turned this economy around. 18 months later, we are still in the economic doldrums.

We are yet to see a vision, economically, from the coalition Government, the right track, wrong track indicator that comes out in multiple polls now is heavily negative for this Government.

Thousands of people are voting with their feet and leaving the country altogether.

People vote with their hip pocket, right? Forget about everything else. If you just look at the economy, that is your greatest determiner of what happens at the election. People vote with their hip pocket - and right now, the hip pocket is suffering, it is not looking good for the economy.

But also, there should be a target right now on Chippy's back in Labour, because Winnie's problem is not with Labour.

Winnie's problem is with Chris Hipkins, which means a different leader and Winston Peters is back in the game as a possibility for Labour. Now that requires Labour to roll Chris Hipkins and then their chances are good again.

However, that requires Labour actually realizing that they need Winston Peters to form a coalition Government after 2026 - and that requires them also realizing there is no way they can coalesce with the Māori Party because most voters are allergic to the shenanigans that that party get up to.

But I don't think Labour is smart enough to realize that yet, do you?

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