National has lost 2 seats, while TMP has gained 2, and the Green party has gained 1. NACT now need NZF to govern.
Rachel Boyack has won Nelson by 21 votes, and Phil Twyford has won Te Atatū by 131 votes.
122 seats because of the overhang, which will rise to 123 after the Port Waikato by-election.
I’m honestly not sure what to think about this. I think NZ First’s involvement will temper some policies, but they are again in a position of a lot of power. Plus, I’m sure Act had previously said the will refuse to work with NZF so coalition agreements may take some time. Honestly it may be easier to go with a Labour/National coalition 😆
It’s only dumb because those two parties only real reason for existence these days is in opposition to each other as the natural parties of government (in their minds).
If National jettisoned the religious fundamentalists, now Labour has lurched to the right in an ill advised attempt to not lose the election there’s even less between the two of them. Mostly just old fashioned racism really holding them back from being the same thing.
Yeah, they are closer to each other than other parties but that two sides mentality holds back a Labour/National coalition. I’d love for it to happen though, even just to see if it worked.
I’d like them to both splinter and form new modern versions of themselves rather than holding on to something 100 years old that bears little relevance to modern problems.
I suspect we have already started to see the splintering. Both National and Labour are much smaller than they have been in previous years.
And of course Labour already went through some of this with Act, Alliance, Greens etc all coming out of their ructions from the end of the 80s. But unfortunately the two brands remain; sucking most of the financial support and media narrative out of our political environment.
Greens actually get donations on par with (and sometimes more than) Labour. And the same with Act and National, though their donations are many times what Labour/Greens get. And if you count the unreported donations to their lobbying arm you’d probably find Act gets the largest share of the donation money.
My suspicion is we’re about to see that a lot of what Seymour says is bluster. He’s also threatened to sit on the cross-benches and only support the government vote by vote. I doubt very much he’ll stick to that, but we’ll see I guess.
Either way, Act are potentially setting themselves up to fail. They’ve promised a lot, but probably won’t be able to deliver on much of it (e.g. treaty referendum, much weaker climate policy). Minor coalition partners can find themselves badly punished by voters if they’re not careful. Greens have managed to do a good job in recent years, but Act may not be able to do the same.
He apparently changed his mind already: ACT’s David Seymour reverses rule-out of working with Winston Peters in Cabinet
It will be interesting to see. By my count, National could go with NZF and TPM to form a government. While National has ruled out working with TPM, if Act are too unreasonable or difficult to work with, it could end up back on the table.
TPM are a very different party than they were during the Key era. It would be very difficult for National & TPM to work together on anything but a handful of issues. It would probably be easier for National to work with the Greens.
Yeah, true. Only other option would be Labour, Greens, TPM, NZF. Not outside the realm of possibility but I’d say very unlikely. I think Labour would feel a term or two out of government would be better for their popularity than sneaking their way back in with such a deal. And I’m pretty sure Winnie said no to working with Labour (not that it means anything).
Another election is also possible, and I’d say more likely than NZF going with labour. NZF will come around eventually to a deal with National. They know the alternatives could be bad for them. Same for Act