Claire Trevett: Why Paula Bennett resigned and what National is losing

It was a typical Paula Bennett way to handle her decision to step out of politics, telling the comedian who has mimicked her over the years before telling the party's leader, Todd Muller.

That comedian was Tom Sainsbury, who was told over the weekend, a couple of days before Bennett's announcement was made public, and before Bennett had told Muller she would announce it.

In the press conference at which she stood down, Bennett made much of the opportunities the National Party had given her.

What she did not talk about was what she had given the National Party.

What she gave them was something different. Bennett was far, far from the stereotypical National Party MP.

She came from a different background, made a lot more noise, had a loud laugh, and an occasional lapse into boganity. She was the galah in a cage of budgies.

Stories featuring Bennett over the years included her breaking up a brawl at a supermarket, saying "zip it, sweetie" to Jacinda Ardern, and sending Winston Peters flowers when he had a leg operation.

It made it easy to underestimate her, and underestimated she was, for a long time, by both friend and foe.

She was unapologetic about being Paula Bennett, and cleverer than most people realised.

She added a breadth to the party's caucus. She was someone who people who did not traditionally look to National, could look to.

John Key recognised it and fostered it, channelling it to his – and her – advantage. She was intensely loyal to Key, to Bill English and then to Simon Bridges.

It was because she was different that Bennett was a constant source of rage for the left, seen as a traitor to her class.

On Twitter, there was some glee about her departure. She highlighted the welfare reforms as the highlight of her career. The people on Twitter saw those reforms as the devil's work.

Bennett was always something of a square peg in a round hole, but it worked, both for her and for National.

By the time she became deputy Prime Minister to English she had adopted a dignity that suited the role.

That showed in the immediate aftermath of the recent leadership contest.

Muller tried to push Bennett out and Bennett initially stared him down, securing the 13th ranking in the Shadow Cabinet. She had to defend Muller for early blunders he made as leader.

But then Bennett took herself off for a week of solitude somewhere in the Kaipara Harbour.

When she returned, she had made up her mind to go. She had lunch with Key to talk it through.

She had gone from fizzing at the bung about the campaign to nothing.

She realised that ahead of her lay either a role as a mid-ranked minister in a new National Government, or another term in Opposition.

She would perhaps have had a slightly better fate if the leadership changed again – but it was likely she would never reach the same heights again.

The rather nondescript trajectories of some former politicians who struggled to find work after politics was on her mind, but Bennett had ticked over 50 years old and decided it was a good age at which to launch a new career rather than wait.

The stateswoman returned for the announcement of her decision to go. There were no sour grapes, she still backed National. She was not bitter. Not. Bitter. At. All.

Sainsbury took it upon himself to help her out. He used the advance notice he was given to create the sign-off Paula Bennett herself no doubt wanted to deliver, but could not.

In a Facebook video that went up as Bennett herself started speaking at a cafe in Hobsonville, Sainsbury – dressed as Bennett – also announced her retirement with repeated and hilarious lapses into cussing "F-you" at the new leadership team.

It ended with the real Bennett and Sainsbury dancing to one of Bennett's anthems: Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.