When political shit goes south

It's funny, but if you observe politics long enough you see the same patterns played out over and over again.

Take, for example, the current travails besetting the National Party - which is currently about as popular as an STD-riddled knocking shop. It only seems like yesterday that the Labour Party was in a similar state. It wasn't so much that they were "Nigel no friends" as they were "Karens without a cause".

As Goff was to Labour, Bridges was to National. If David Shearer was Labour's 'mumblefuck' (people in his own inner sanctum called him this), then Muller was National's "clusterfuck".

Which kind of makes Judith Collins National's answer to David Cunliffe.

Now, as disturbing as that sounds, and as much as both of them would loathe the comparison, it actually holds some weight. Cunliffe led a party that had seen its vote collapse. In a desperate bid to shore up its vote he took it to the left - and in doing so he abandoned the middle. You know, that juicy piece of political real estate where most of the voters hang out.

And we all know how that worked out.

Collins has been doing the same. When you're polling in the 20s, and incidentally well below that mid-30s mark you've previously signalled as a benchmark for stability of leadership, you're going to try and pull any sort of rabbit out of hat to try and shore up your support. In this case the rabbit is a redneck with overwhelming overtones of racism.

This approach might have got Don Brash to 40% in 2005, but that was a generation ago. Demographs have changed, and while there remains an innate core of conservatism and racism in the country, its not the force it was 16 years ago. Playing the race card plays to the National Party base, but not so much to the centre as it once did.

The irony is we're hearing some of the same arguments over the relevance and importance of the centre as we did a decade ago. I remember sitting absolutely gobsmacked as a senior Labour MP declared to me (completely seriously I might add) that there was no centre in New Zealand politics and any suggestion it existed was the fevered imagination of the mainstream media. There was also the vehement denial of the polls and the stubborn insistence of, "that's not what I'm hearing on the ground".

Of course it's not. You're shoring up your base, you're talking to to your own supporters. Of course they're going to reflect your expectations.

John Key may have been the least ideological Prime Minister in recent history. He may have been a poll-driven populist who enjoyed the attention and adulation Prime Ministership brought him. He may have also had the least consequential political legacy of any Prime Minister New Zealand's ever had (cough .. flag ... cough). But, he was incredibly plugged into the electorate and innately tuned to their needs, wants, and fears - and he knew how to meet them.

The National Party no longer does.