Our next Prime Minister

David Farrar had an April Fool’s joke going around on Sunday, saying that Jacinda Ardern had announced that when she goes on maternity leave, Winston will be a PM with full powers and authority. I had a good laugh at this, seeing that it was April 1st after all. But then, suddenly, it didn’t seem funny any more.


“I have sought advice from the Cabinet Office about the proper governance arrangements during my parental leave.

The Cabinet Office has advised that a Minister is normally only appointed Acting when the is out of the country. There is no precedent to have both a and Acting in the country at the same time.

To avoid any confusion, Cabinet has decided that during my parental leave the Rt Hon Winston Peters will be sworn in as the 41st Prime Minister of New Zealand.”

Winston finally gets to be Prime Minister – his life long desire. Cynically you have to wonder if this was an unofficial part of the coalition deal – Labour could give him the one thing National couldn’t – a place in the history books as Prime Minister.

End of quote:

But whether this is true or not, it got me thinking about what life is going to be like with Winston as Prime Minister.

First of all, he shouldn’t be Prime Minister at all, as his party only got 7% at the last election. But we all understand the vagaries of MMP even if we don’t like it, so we have to accept this situation as it is.

Having brought down the Jenny Shipley Government, and very nearly the Helen Clark Government, Winston went into political oblivion for a while. And there he would have stayed if only so many people didn’t cling to the ridiculous idea that Winston is good in politics, as he’ll ‘keep the government honest’.

What government has Winston ever kept honest? Seriously?

But let us leave the distant past aside for now. Let us look at the last six months and some of the things that Winston has done in that time.

It is now absolutely clear that Winston never had the slightest intention of forming a coalition with the National party last October. Whether he was extracting utu for, among other things, the leak of his superannuation overpayments, or whether the ginger nuts gave the game away and he realised that Jacinda would be going on parental leave, he was always going to go with Labour.  Our next PM did not care one iota about how the country had voted. He did not care one iota about what would happen to a thriving economy under a bunch of socialist idiots who had no idea how to deliver any of their promises. For him, either becoming Prime Minister for a time, or giving the finger to Bill English was his primary motive.  Or maybe it was both. Whatever the truth, Winston made it quite clear he did not care either how the electorate voted or what would be the best thing for the country. Extracting utu was far more important.

He even tried to say that capitalism has failed, when we all know that it is capitalism that is lifting millions of people around the world out of poverty every year, and the only alternative, socialism, causes misery everywhere it is found.

But move forward to the last couple of months. First of all, there are laughable attempts to justify pursuing a trade deal with Russia, by saying that there is no evidence that the Russians shot down the plane over the Ukraine in 2015. Everybody knows that the Russians did it. Sure, they deny it, but they always deny everything. We were a week late in joining our natural allies in calling for sanctions against Russia for the nerve gas poisoning in Salisbury, and we supposedly have no Russian spies to expel. He has made us a laughing stock around the world, but that is not actually the worst thing. He has driven a wedge between us and our allies in the world that may not be forgotten in a hurry.

How’s that for a great Foreign Minister?

But for me, the telling thing about Winston’s current mindset is his attitude at the valedictory speeches of both Bill English and Steven Joyce. Having robbed them of another term in government, one might think that Winston would have the grace to acknowledge both of them at the end of their Parliamentary careers. After all, he had won. He was going to be Prime Minister, as he had always wanted, and they were both finished. But Winston demonstrated that he doesn’t have a gracious bone in his body on both occasions. He didn’t have a kind word to say about either of them, and was the very last person to stand in the House at the end of Steven Joyce’s speech. All the Labour MPs, all the Greens and all of the other NZ First MPs were on their feet, applauding. But not Winston.


So that is the person who is going to be our next PM. Nasty, bitter, extracting utu are the qualities that describe him best these days. And for however long we have to tolerate him as Prime Minister, we are at the mercy of someone who only ever acts for himself. He doesn’t care about the country at all.

I, for one, am worried about it. I think you should be too.


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