Peters is assumed to have forfeited 90 percent of his conservative support. In response to this strategic error, all National believes it has to do is position itself as the only “genuine” conservative party, swallow-up NZ First’s right-wing support, and emerge sufficiently enlarged to govern alone.

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Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...