The ironies in the current political landscape, woven by the Covid virus, continue to unfold. In a climate of NZ first, the NZ First Party, built around that very agenda, is threatened with collapse.  The xenophobia has been mainstreamed into a kindlier version. It is no longer about appealing to a certain red neck and pearl and twinset sector of the regional population but has shifted to the urban liberals where the grumpy and cantankerous patriarchal role as played by Winston and Shane is not acceptable. And then there is the mainstreaming of Social Credit policy. After ninety years of being marginal and eccentric (‘funny money’) the idea of low-interest state credit is suddenly top of the pops. The party stalwarts stir in their graves.

Just below the surface of things the memory of the first 1935 Labour Government is being evoked. It was the longest running Labour government (14 years), Micky Savage was a kindly figure, and Bob Semple and his wheelbarrow is replaced by shovel ready projects (with diggers and dump trucks) but the agenda is the same: jobs.

Travel ahead to the war – leaders love the crisis of war – this time the war is the war on Covid, but as in any war situation the persecutor-victim-rescuer syndrome becomes the dominant pattern. We have been rescued from foreign invasion but the threat of persecution remains. Suddenly poor old David Clarke is the persecutor for stating the reasonably obvious: once policy is set, management is responsible for administering it. Ashleigh Bloomfield became the victim in need of rescuing through a gift of cut flowers. The compassionate lockdown leavers (victims of family circumstance) became persecutors. Returning Kiwis, like returning soldiers, threaten the national purse. Bunjy jumping is having to be rescued but that somehow persecutes small businesses, Our kindness doesn’t extend to work visa holders who could become swaggers reminiscent of those depression blokes wandering from farm to farm and sleeping in the woolshed. Somehow they don’t figure, are a sort of non people who will hopefully disappear.

A mythical homeless person inveigled themselves into a quarantine hotel (the hotels must be doing alright out of this) and supposedly lived in lockdown luxury – was he a persecutor, a victim, or was he being rescued? The new Greymouth hospital overruns its budget by 60 million (80%) and I wonder whether the old one couldn’t have been fixed up for far less. The Pike exercise has rescued a broken robot and a review of the health and disability sector, led by Helen Clark’s fix-it person forgot to consult the disability sector. The most technologically advanced country in the world can’t manage to do postal voting and I’m getting confused whether a document is on my computer, on my backup hard drive or on google docs or on all three and if the latter, whether they’re the same document. Meanwhile my daughter showed me the hotspot and tethering function on my phone, we tried it out briefly and the next day the offer of a new plan arrived. I didn’t get paranoid but did wonder whether we are being constantly processed by algorithms and if so, why there isn’t an algorithm that picks up viruses.

Meanwhile Rocket Lab sends up satellites for the US military and we are reassured that the 5 Eye system remains benign. We have sufficient morality to modestly protest the Israeli takeover of the West Bank (confirming Palestinian victimhood) but not sufficient to whimper against the US blockade of Cuba (persecuted because they refused to be victims).

Roll on NZ first.