Dave Stewart

I spent most of Sunday explaining away the election outcome to friends on the left and right, all of whom were confused and disappointed at the lack of a result.

It was the first election in my life where I never had a watch party – I couldn’t see the point because the result, to me, was always going to be a long way off election day.

At present, National looks to be able to limp into office with its billionaire-funded overhang the star of the show.

In six or nine years’ time, history will remind us that, in 2026, National lost the party vote, which has left them to the mercy of extremists – the very thing it ran its entire campaign against.

I think once Christopher Luxon steps down, as he surely will in order for National to do a deal with Opportunity, National will move back to the centre and that’s not a bad thing.

We’ll probably even look back on the failed Luxon experiment and see his benefits for National, like holding the thing together to full term and delivering enough electorate MPs to ensure governing.

But there’s not a lot else to acknowledge right at the minute. No one likes Luxon and no one wants him.

But politics is ever changing; it’s not a monolith and people have been speculating on the grand coalition concept of a National-Labour coalition.

I think it’s inevitable given the sharp drift to the right that politics has taken in the Trump era.

Sadly, it won’t be by design, but rather as a lack of vision and forward thinking. It will be forced on them by political climate change instead.

The real problem with the grand coalition now is that the kind of National people who could have been included in that coalition are gone via the way the Team Billionaire gamed MMP.

That and too many of the electorate National MPs are already in Act or NZ First factions.

National’s biggest threat comes from this alignment with extremists.

If they go to war on Te Tiriti they risk creating a constitutional crisis, the least of which will be instability from mass protests.

We’ve seen before how far New Zealanders will go to fight racism.

So, the current National Party, assuming it can cobble together a principled deal with Opportunity, will then have three partners to please and they all hate each other.

National’s only real friend at the moment is Labour. And Labour is in the box seat in the grand coalition deal, in my opinion. They can safely sit.

And let’s not forget that the special votes and born to rule arrogance of the right-wing block could go against them and see a 2017 style election night rout for Labour.

We are at a very interesting stage of our history. From a political enthusiast’s perspective, it’s really fascinating.

Do we go down the road America went with Trump and stage all our war on the people, or do we read the warning signs and do something smart?

As a disclaimer, my preference was Red/Green, the Greener the better.

I campaigned for that so it’s no big secret. I was voting Blue/Green originally until not long after Simeon Brown took over as campaign chair and began the slide to destroy his team’s party vote with fearmongering, fallacies and non-facts.

I’m pleased Dana Kirkpatrick retained her seat and congratulate her on a bigger majority. I know it grates my lefty friends to say it, but I think she deserved to win.

She’s a good advocate for the East Cape electorate in a government that wishes we were invisible.

But this outcome wasn’t unexpected for me. It was easy to see that both National and Labour both want the middle.

I say give it to them.

Then we can start talking about the disengaged and see if they’re interested in a coalition.

As for the things that are important to me and ways to get them, nothing has changed.

We take our solidarity to the intersections and roundabouts and High Streets of our towns and cities, and we carry on the campaign regardless of the election outcome, which was gamed anyway.

We think this country is worth fighting for, and we have a big fight to protect it from Team Billionaire.

Party politics aside, that’s where we all really need to focus our energies.

We have to start thinking of effecting change beyond the ballot box.