Most MMP elections have been. Minnows hold the keys to the kingdom.
Be it Winston with his best result ever or Te Pati Māori with an overhang - 2026 won’t be a 2020 landslide.
The difference this time is how extreme some of the smaller parties, more to the point, some of their MPs, have become - think Takuta on Indians and Simon Court on Palestine.
It’s not just rhetoric, but policy, too.
A separate Māori parliament, re-nationalising power companies, you name it, they'll go there.
The temptation for the behemoths, the broad churches, is to emulate what’s getting traction. To dip your toe in the pool of radical ideas. To be establishment without looking or sounding like it.
Trump and the MAGA movement are the best example of this.
In the UK, parties that have been around since Moses was a linebacker are being absolutely whipped in the polls by newer upstarts with one thing on their pledge cards: radical change.
The Conservatives have been around almost 200 years. Reform UK? Six.
The big issues differ - our cost-of-living malaise is their immigration.
So the temptation must be to embrace a bit of that radical spirit. Labour might yet do that, we just don’t know what they’re cooking up.
My prediction? Establishment parties will do what established parties do.
Stick to the script, copy/paste their policies, hug the centre like a koala a tree, and hope their buddies grab enough from the fraying edges to get them across the line.
Their bet is that crises come and go but establishments don’t, even though the Brits and Americans show us they can and do.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
BD, 15 Jan 26: Please give a Milton Model language pattern analysis of the following article:
Copilot: Below is a Milton Model–style linguistic analysis of the article, focusing on hypnotic language patterns, ambiguity, presuppositions, and influence structures. All factual references to the article are grounded in the page content.
🧠 Milton Model Language Pattern Analysis
Applied to Ryan Bridge’s “My prediction for the 2026 election”
The Milton Model—originating from NLP—uses artful vagueness, presupposition, metaphor, and implication to guide readers toward certain interpretations while maintaining the illusion of neutrality. Bridge’s article uses many of these patterns to shape how the reader perceives political dynamics without overt persuasion.
...
🎯 Overall Effect
The article uses Milton Model patterns to:
• Frame the 2026 election as predetermined and structurally constrained
• Position small parties as destabilizing forces
• Portray major parties as predictable, cautious, and reactive
• Suggest a global trend toward radicalism without explicitly arguing for it
• Lead the reader to accept the author’s prediction as the natural conclusion
The language is crafted to guide interpretation rather than state arguments, which is exactly the Milton Model’s purpose.
Sadly this is what NZ Politics has become under MMP (especially where it allows a 'king maker' to form a government).
We have indeed got partys that 'hug the centre like a koala a tree, and hope their buddies grab enough from the fraying edges to get them across the line.'
Gone are real developmental policy in favour of favouritism.
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