National is a party with a well-earned history of being the natural party of government, a centre-right party, a broad church of liberals and conservatives. It has mana. A party that got things done.
A party that did more for advancing treaty settlements through the efforts of Douglas Graham and Christopher Finlayson than the left has ever managed. The party of business and farming with a strong middle- and working-class rural base.
At the last election, it haemorrhaged votes to Labour and Act. It lost seats that National should never lose. Ilam and Rangitata for goodness' sake.
Seymour is like the cat with the cream. He can't stop looking like Batman's Joker. He thinks he has a real chance of being at least deputy PM one day, maybe not 2023 but 2026 for sure.
Can he hold up for that long? History says no. National, like Labour, has been on its knees before. The question is can it recover enough to not only provide a united front but also offer a viable option to centre voters.
Labour's only real claim to fame to date, but not a bad one, is its early management on Covid-19. It is now at the fag end of vaccinations, the last really hard 10 to 15 per cent of the population, Māori, Pasifika, the apathetic, the scared, the anti-vax brigade and the people who just don't engage in our society. Both Māori and Pasifika are making huge progress though, thankfully.
Otherwise, it has achieved little of its plans for transformation. Three Waters, rightly or wrongly, really annoys voters. He Puapua scares centre voters because Labour seems to have the tiger by the tail. A strong, forceful Māori caucus and an admittedly kind PM who also does not mind conflict across the house but not with her Māori MPs.
So National has a choice, I believe they need to excise the ongoing issue that is Collins with her history and combative style. In my opinion, she is not a natural or uniting leader, using the divide-and-rule theory within her own party.
She needs to go but it will be bloody and even then could finish National as a major party for a while.
She has split the parliamentary wing, silencing the more liberal MPs and bringing forward the conservative faction that just does not get it that New Zealand is a very different place now compared to the comfortable conservative times of the 1960s when National ruled forever.
In my opinion, National under Collins is seen as out of touch and somewhat irrelevant to middle voters. It needs to portray a younger, more liberal and, yes, more brown face to the electorate. Having Shane Reti as deputy is nice. Some perhaps might say a token.
Either get rid of Collins now, two years out from the election with time for a new, revived leadership team OR continue down the rabbit hole to irrelevancy in 2023. Then fire her when Labour wins a third term, perhaps with the Greens having significant influence without New Zealand First - a scenario that scares the daylights out of the average centre voter -and spend the three years to 2026 rebuilding.
There is just time if change occurred now for National to at least become a viable opposition to Labour in 2023 for centre voters to see another option with the party that does get things done.
National voters would also return from their flirtation with Seymour and, frankly, some MPs who must never become ministers. That shifting middle vote might go back to the right as well.
Otherwise a third term of Labour: a well-meaning, outwardly kind and popular PM who really has had a rough spin since 2019 but is slowly losing her stardust, and an under-performing Cabinet that only really has about five big-hitters.
A strong, assertive Māori caucus pushing the Māori renaissance is not a bad thing in itself but scary to many New Zealanders not aware of our real colonial history and not feeling part of the game at present.
What to do, National? Do the right thing or suck it up for the next five years? Let Labour enact huge changes that, frankly, the electorate have yet to be asked to consider?
