Slouching towards Wellington

The many faces of Winston Peters: all of them, whether we like it or not - our own.

THE POLITICAL CLASS has never understood Winston Peters. Even when they thought they were stoning him to political death in the run-up to the 2008 election, they had no idea what they were really doing.

Peters is "us" – New Zealand – plagued with all our vices, and blessed with all our virtues. Drive him from Parliament and our democracy doesn’t become stronger – it becomes weaker. Banish his "redneckery" from public discourse and all you do is infuse it with the terrible allure of the forbidden.

When I think of Peters, I am reminded of the scene in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, when the beleaguered president stands before the portrait of JFK in the White House and says: ‘When the American people look at you, they see themselves as they would like to be. When they look at me, they see themselves as they are."

That’s the way it is with Winston.

Some of us, of course, are appalled at the sight, but a great many others like what they see. That certainly would have been the case when they watched the clips from last Sunday’s Q&A replayed on One Network News.

There he was – the people’s champion – saying all the things they had been waiting to hear someone in Parliament say ever since the Ministerial Review of the Foreshore & Seabed Act was released on Wednesday, 2 July 2009.

You certainly have to give Winston credit: not only for the performance itself – which was as good as anything he had ever done in the past – but also for his timing. Since the loss of 2008, he has watched and he has waited. And now, thanks to John Key’s extraordinary political naiveté, the moment for him to make his move has arrived.

Like his namesake, Winston Churchill, he’s been dwelling in the political wilderness – driven from power by his enemies, and deserted by his friends. But on Sunday, sensing a moment of national peril, and with the people's supposed "representatives" all succumbing to "sickly white liberal" appeasement, he stepped forward to demand action.

This is National’s worst nightmare: Winston live on network television; whistling "Dixie" and flashing that trademark grin. Naturally, Messers Farrar, Slater and Hooton will spit and snarl, but, in their Machiavellian heart-of-hearts, they know that Peters is on his way back – with scores to settle.

The big question for the Labour Opposition to answer is: "Do we try to beat him, or join him?"

Phil Goff has a heaven-sent opportunity to re-connect with the constituency Labour turned its back on between 2005 and 2008.

Will he take it – and become Prime Minister? Or, will he bow to his Left, expiate the guilt of 2003-04, and see Labour’s fortunes falter?

Surely he’s not silly enough to cast aside an issue that could rescue his party from endless years on the Opposition benches? Surely he won’t forgo the opportunity to join forces with the man who can shatter National’s grip on provincial New Zealand? Or spurn a coalition partner capable of electorally eclipsing both the Greens and the Maori Party?

It’s a no-brainer Phil.

Prove to us you’ve got the balls to do what all leaders must do, one way or the other.

See power lying in the gutter – and pick it up.

It's all pure W.B. Yeats, boys and girls. The words of The Second Coming need only the slightest tweaking:

… somewhere, in bowells of TVNZ
A body in a Saville Row suit with a head of steel-grey hair,
His gaze blank and pitiless as the TV lights,
Is flossing his bright white teeth, while all around him
Flit the shadows of indignant Gallery journalists.
The darkness drops again; but now we know
That eight months of stony silence
Were broken by a Ministerial Review,
And what svelte beast, his hour come round again,
Slouches toward Wellington to be reborn?