John McLean: The National Party's Death Wish

Kisses of death The Nats are planting on their party and ordinary New Zealanders’ prospects

The National Party is repeating an ordained-from-on-high mantra that New Zealand voters must two-ticks National at the next general i.e., give both their electorate and party votes to the nosediving Nats.

That voting, they say, is the best way to help ensure another National-led coalition Government. At the National Party’s campaign launch on Sunday 27 September, ex-National Party Prime Minister John Key cajoled voters to two-ticks Nats and labelled all New Zealanders who are contemplating voting otherwise “stupid”. Two-ticks Nats is therefore clearly official, mandated Nats messaging, which campaign manager Simeon Brown repeated on media outlet The Platform (where PM Luxon refuses to appear) on Wednesday, 7 October.



The cold, hard reality, however, is that Nat/Nat’ing will in actual fact reduce the chances of a right block (Nat/ACT/NZ First) Government, compared to what could be achieved by strategic vote splitting.

Under New Zealand’s MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) voting system, it’s simply indisputable that, for any voter who wants to see a Nat/ACT/NZF coalition Government returned, the best tactic is to vote for their National candidate in the voter’s electorate and for either ACT or NZ First on the party vote list. Such voting is especially warranted if a voter’s National electorate candidate has a good chance of winning the electorate.

To make this abundantly clear, there’s absolutely nothing rule-breaking or otherwise untoward about voting splitting under MMP. Dual electorate/party list MMP voting itself contemplates and therefore sanctions vote splitting.

The Maori Party is promoting vote splitting, for its own ends.

I won’t explain vote splitting further. Numerous political boffins, tragics and partisans have done the whys and wherefores of split voting to death, including Harry Mowbray on his very own website:

Mowbray vote splitting

My interest is more in why the National Party is continuing to promote Nat/Nat voting that, based on current political polls, could well hand the election to a Labour-led Leftist coalition Government and cast the bewildered Nats into the wilderness.

My best bet at the Nats’ psychology in pumping Nat/Nat ticking lies in a vainglorious delusion of entitlement to forever hold and wield political power — A Divine Right to Govern New Zealand’s increasingly fragile democracy.

The current Nats/Nats voting mantra is steeped in an arrogant and flawed notion that it’s a fait accompli the Nats will lead the next Government. According to the Naterati, the only concern is to ensure that the Nats get as many MPs into Parliament as possible, it being falsely assumed that the National Party will lead the next coalition Government. This is either derangement, desperation or stupid bravado, or a complex combo of those mentalities.

Through blindness – willful or otherwise - the Nats are simply not seeing the writing on the wall.

At the last election, the National Party obtained just over 38% of overall party votes. They are now polling at about 10% (more than a quarter) less than that – 28%. Nicola Willis, National Party Deputy Leader and Minister of Finance, Economic Growth and Social Investment, will simply not be in Parliament let alone Government after the next election. Neither will Chris Bishop, Attorney-General and Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, Resource Management reform and Transport.

Paul Goldsmith, Minister of Justice & Defence and numerous other Ministries – vanquished too. Parliament’s current Speaker and National Party MP, Gerry Brownlee – vaporized from the Parliament over which he currently presides.

The National Party’s insular brains trust, and their juvenile advisers, are clearly remote - nigh on divorced – from the Nats’ electorate MPs. There’s a clear schism between the National Party’s beltway inner sanctum and the ranks of Natty electorate MPs.

The National Party has simply failed to grasp the contemporary, evolved realities of MMP. And this is far from the only chink in The Nats’ dented and disintegrating suit of armor.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is banging away at The Nats’ battered armor, with his own shiny ball/d hammer. In the TVNZ leaders’ debate on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, between Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, Luxoflex produced the following clangers:

He couldn’t concede that it’s not immoral, in itself, to be a billionaire.

Sir Luxolot claimed that he simply hasn’t read the report provided to his good mate Matt Doocey, as Associate Minister of Health, into preferential admissions to Medical Schools for individuals with Maori or Polynesian ancestry. This is the report produced in connection with the National Party’s broken promise, in its coalition agreement with NZ First, to review the effectiveness of Med School racialisation. Luxon has either read the report, or he damn well should have.

PM Luxon didn’t deny that Israel has executed a genocide of Gazan Palestinians. GlobaLuxon said he would defer to the anti-Israel International Court of “Justice” on such matters.

Luxakeha claimed that his BIGGEST personal regret is not learning more Maori language.

Humpy Dumpy Luxie absolutely ruled out exploring the prospect of the Opportunity Party joining a Nats/ACT/NZ First coalition, in order to keep the neo-Marxists out of the corridors of power. Wouldn’t it have been lovely – and prudent – if he’d left that prospect open, provided the amorphous Opportunity construct changes its manifestly malleable policy “positions”.

Whether or not there’s a National Party-dominant coalition Government after the next election, Luxon’s remaining time at the helm is distinctly short.

In an interview with Sean Plunket on The Platform yesterday (8 October), John Key made it abundantly clear that his aversion to vote splitting – which would clearly increase the likelihood of a return of the current coalition Government – is born purely and simply of a visceral personal hatred of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters. Key would rather see a Leftist Government under Chris Hipkins than a burgeoning and emboldened NZ First. WTF. ShonKey, to a tee:

KEY INDICATORS
John McLean 27 August 2024

Aotearoa is a strange and changeable lady. In her youth, she didn’t take herself too seriously. New Zealand satirists A. K. Grant and Tom Scott, in their superb early 80s mock history of New Zealand The Paua and the Glory: the story of New Zealand's rise to international insignificance,
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Dead eyed John Key is therefore a creepy quisling against the National Party’s traditional values; an unprincipled Tony Blair type. The unpatriotic puller of pony tails is a menace to everyday New Zealanders’ hopes for a free, equal, democratic New Zealand. To all intents and purposes, Key and his ilk simply haven’t moved on from the National/Labour dichotomy that prevailed in the days of the defunct First-Past-The-Post (FFP) electoral system, three decades dead.

If the Nats want a blueprint for where they’re going as a party, and – on their current trajectory – the dystopia to which they’re condemning New Zealanders, look no further than the shriveled British Conservative (Tory) Party and Britain’s Disunited & Disintegrating Kingdom.

The National Party’s mindless complacency and hubris is a clear and present danger to the New Zealand polity. Nationalism is a powerful force for good and National is no longer nationalist.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced