Barry Soper: Timing hasn't treated Bill English well

Timing in politics is everything. With Bill English time has passed him by throughout his senior political career.

English was out of step with time when he had to face off against Helen Clark after she'd had just three years in Government. He was on a hiding to nothing and got a thrashing.

Timing looked as though it was finally ticking away in his favour in the run-up to this election until Andrew Little called time and the Jacindamania juggernaut took over, with time passing English by in a flash.

As it turns out the timing of John Key's departure has dealt English another blow, given the events of the past week.

After he finally calls it quits and unless he can make it back as Prime Minister he won't be eligible for the Prime Ministerial pension, currently at $52,000 a year for life, nor the new taxpayer-funded car after the last one's done 60,000km, nor will he get free air travel if he's going somewhere to talk about the old job. The perks are also passed on to the former PM's wife once he departs this mortal coil.

But none of them will be available to Bill English, because he wasn't in the job for two years. Jacinda Ardern will have no such trouble when she moves on, providing she can hold things together for the next term.

And timing hasn't served him well as he heads the National Party into Opposition. The party will be scrambling to find more than $600,000, ordered by the High Court, because it used Eminem's Lose Yourself in its 2014 election campaign. It's turned out to be something of an omen for the Nats this time.

When the court decision came out it was as though National president Peter Goodfellow was in denial, putting out a press statement saying the judgment "found that the party in using the track did not act flagrantly or in a manner which justifies the party being further punished". No mention of the $600K at all. Perhaps he didn't think the media would read the judgment.

But then it's been a tough week for National and will be even tougher today as it hands over the reins of power to the new executive, which Bill English says is bloated at 31 ministers and undersecretaries when he ran his with 28.

Truth is, his minnow support parties had only four MPs between the three of them and there's no doubt if New Zealand First had seen things his way this time round English would have complied.

It's the logic that he applied to the bloated executive that was rather confusing though, saying it showed the incoming Government intends to use taxpayer money to solve political problems, and here's me thinking that's why we pay our taxes!