The media are talking about Winston as if he has gone already. The man whose political career spans nearly 50 years has reached an ignominious end. Everyone is treating him as irrelevant. Judith Collins, in promising funding for the racing industry, has just made an attempt to steal his last remaining support. Gun owners have already switched to ACT. Winston is as belligerent as ever, claiming he will get 11% in the final vote, but it is very noticeable that he turned up at the Minor Party Leaders debate this time. For the last couple of elections, he has refused to attend, claiming that NZ First is not a minor party. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
My first experience of minor parties in government was in Britain in the 1970s, when the Callaghan government needed the Liberals to gain a majority. I was barely old enough to vote then, but soon learned of the vagaries of minority governments. The Liberals preened and postulated, making it clear to everyone that they held more than the balance of power. They held all the power. One wrong move from Labour and the country would be back at the polling booths, ready to punish the incumbent. So, I was never very happy about the introduction of MMP, because I had seen it all before. The only difference was that Callaghan’s minority government would end, whereas New Zealand was condemned to an eternity of minor party postulating. So far, I have not seen anything that makes me think I was wrong about that.
Winston saw the benefits of MMP very early on. Forming his party at the early stages of the introduction of MMP, he made it into parliament straight away. The rewards to minor parties who make it into parliament always considerably outstrip their share of the vote. Winston made sure he benefited from the new parliamentary structure, and started holding the Bolger/Shipley government to ransom. It didn’t work, but he brought down the government anyway. And, like a witches’ curse, our political system has followed much the same pattern ever since.
Fast forward to 2017, and once again Winston found himself in the box seat. Having betrayed his voters on a number of previous occasions, this time he did it in style. Knowing full well that some of his support were people who normally vote for National, but went with Winston so he would ‘keep the government honest’, he went, as we know, with Labour and the Greens. No amount of howls of betrayal were going to change the position in the short term. Those who voted for Winston put him in pole position, and he was determined to use that power to gain as much influence and benefit for himself as possible. He did. As deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, it should have been seen as scandalous that someone who commanded 7% of the vote should have such power, such prestige and such influence.
Such are the vagaries of MMP. The tail wags the dog so hard, the dog is effectively paralysed.
There is something seriously wrong with a political system that allows a minor party with 7% of the vote to form a government which completely overlooks the party that received the largest proportion of the votes. Unfortunately, the legislation introducing MMP was another piece of badly written law that allowed such ignominy. There was nothing we could do. Winston ignored National voters, betrayed his own voters and played fast and loose with democracy. If what he did was legally right, it was morally bankrupt, and the voters were not happy about it.
Winston has polled poorly ever since. Even if voters could stomach the fact that he had put his own interests ahead of those of the country, no one could deny that he managed, once again, to forget all his campaign promises once he was back in the halls of power. What of his promises to reduce immigration and get rid of the Maori seats? Like before, these things were swiftly forgotten once he was deputy prime minister; a deputy who was able to call all the shots because the Labour/Greens bloc needed him, and everyone knew it.
But gradually, over the 24 years since MMP came into play, voters have started to understand how it works, and are voting accordingly. Most of the minor parties have fallen by the wayside, with only ACT and possibly the Greens likely to be in the house when the next government is formed. Yes, there is a whole raft of new minor parties struggling for relevancy at the current election, but it seems unlikely that any of them will break the 5% threshold. Most of them will have disappeared by the time the next election comes around. It could be that voters have tired of all these minor parties that promise the earth but can either do nothing when they get into government or, as in Winston’s case, they don’t actually bother to try.
While I am not necessarily suggesting that we should ditch MMP all together, I do think that our system needs an overhaul. We need to make amendments to the rules that allow a party with a very small percentage of the vote to make all the decisions regarding the next government. Perhaps we should adopt a system similar to that in Germany, where the party that wins the largest share of the vote always gets the first opportunity to form a government. Winston would not have been able to blindside National in 2017 if that rule had been in place; he would have had to negotiate in good faith, which is what he should have done anyway.
What will be Winston’s legacy? Honestly, I can think of nothing of value at all. The man who manipulated the political system to his own advantage time and time again? The man with the most broken electoral promises? I hold a genuine if possibly rose-tinted belief that all those who go into politics do so, at least initially, because they want to make a difference to people’s lives. That intention may fade as they progress through their careers, but I am not sure it could ever have been said about Winston. It seems to me at least that Winston’s only desire in his long political career was to do better for himself. Of that, he ought to be ashamed, but what can I say? You know Winston.
As the curtain falls on his political career, it seems that he will go out, not with a bang, but with a whimper. There were rumours that he would step down gracefully, rewarded with a knighthood and a cushy overseas posting, such as Ambassador to the USA. All that seems unlikely now. COVID has robbed him of the usual oxygen he generates at election time, and it seems he will simply fade away. It is sad to think that a man who promised so much and had such enormous potential ended up wasting it all. I thought he would be our first Maori prime minister. He should have been, but unfortunately, he was unable to channel his energies into the right direction. He craved the limelight, but became better known for personal crusades than for anything that really benefited the country, and that is probably the saddest part of all.
Finally, to all those of you who say we must never underestimate Winston, I would remind you of what Judith Collins had to say during the Leaders’ Debate last Wednesday on the subject. When asked about the possibility of forming a government with Winston, she said:
“As a Christian I do believe in miracles, but I tell you what, he won’t be one of them.”
Arrivederci Winston. It’s been fun. Not for the country, but certainly for you.
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