I'm so happy with this. NZF screw everything they touch so making National and Act work with NZF is going to stick on their craw. its beautiful.
but then a right wing government truly sucks. expect more asset sales and more crappy policies helping the rich and screwing the poor.
just a shame we didn't get enough for labour/tmp/green coalition
hopefully they'll fuck up so badly everyone goes green/red next election
Winston's never really been one to go for asset sales etc. Setting aside his current populism around the covid, trans rights etc he's usually been relatively centrist in an old fashioned Conservative type of way. Ie, not really that centrist if you're a marxist, but usually not a full on beneficiary basher like NAct.
I do really worry about his even more extreme populist bent this time around, and really worry for the marginalised communities that a lot of that shittiness gets directed at.
I'm honestly not sure what to think about this. I think NZ First's involvement will temper some policies, but they are again in a position of a lot of power. Plus, I'm sure Act had previously said the will refuse to work with NZF so coalition agreements may take some time. Honestly it may be easier to go with a Labour/National coalition 😆
It's only dumb because those two parties only real reason for existence these days is in opposition to each other as the natural parties of government (in their minds).
If National jettisoned the religious fundamentalists, now Labour has lurched to the right in an ill advised attempt to not lose the election there's even less between the two of them. Mostly just old fashioned racism really holding them back from being the same thing.
Yeah, they are closer to each other than other parties but that two sides mentality holds back a Labour/National coalition. I'd love for it to happen though, even just to see if it worked.
National's candidates come across as very right wing to me, to the point that many I would guess would be happier in Act but had more chance of getting into parliament with National. I don't think there is a world where a Luxon-led National would work with the Greens.