10 Good Things about Winston Peters [updated]

Since everyone anywhere near political power this month is falling over themselves to say nice things about Winston, the fellow they each hope will become their closest friend for the next three years (hope is so often in vain), I thought I’d pull an old post out of the archives to remind you that the old fellow isn’t all bad. There are at least Ten Good Things about him to cheer.

Sure, his immigration grandstanding gives him headlines, hatred and polling increases, showing you can never underestimate the market for bare-faced, scaremongering xenophobia. And it’s somwhat ludicrous seeing policy wonks scouring through their respective parties’ policy manifestoes to demonstrate just how close their particular party is to those of Winston First — laughable because the leader of the black and white party couldn’t give a fig for policies. He simply wants a job that gives him a limousine and a high-powered office near Bellamy’s.

So with that in mind then, here are the the top ten Good Things about The Great Dissembler:

10. Winston likes a drink. Rare enough in these days of wall-to-wall wowserism, so a good thing in and of itself in my book. Just as long as he’s buying.

9. Winston helps with unemployment. Winston has over the years offered benevolent assistance with unemployment for a vast number of the otherwise unemployable. Who else for example would offer employment to the dozens of tailors dummies that have occupied all the other mercifully non-speaking seats around the NZ First caucus table?

8. Winston is a perfect litmus test.
Winston is the perfect litmus test because you know immediately that when you meet a Winston First supporter, unless you want an evening spent hearing about the assorted iniquities of India dairy owners and Chinese home-owners, then you won't want them as a dinner companion. So this immediately rules out around 7% of the voting population, making the organisation of dinner engagements so much easier.

7. Winston raises standards.
Two words: Sartorial elegance. As David Lange famously observed when Winston was late for a meeting, “I expect he’s been detained by a full-length mirror.” And his time there is not wasted. His focus on sartorial elegance over political substance at once raises the dress-sense of parliament, and ensures little of substance is discussed there. (And given the direction that substance would otherwise take, this is A Good Thing.)

6. Winston is the Perfect Politician.

As Winston showed when he was Treasurer, he doesn't want to work like a cabinet minister; he just wants to look like one. A cabinet minister with a big office with his And when the state of politics is all bad, trending as it does today mostly towards statism, the last thing you would want is a hard-working politician — it would come with the serious danger that they might get something done.
With Winston however, this is never a problem. Being incurably lazy, possibly the laziest man in Parliament, makes him the Perfect Politician for these statist times. A Good Thing – a very, very Good Thing — the lazier the politician, the less trouble they pose to us.
Winston should be a model to many others within the parliamentary precinct. As Mark Twain observed, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” With more politicians in the legislature with Winston's work ethic, parliamentary activity would soon slow to a satisfactorily safe stupor.

5. Winston is shameless.

Winston offers willing students a master-class in grandstanding, something Gareth Morgan still needs help with. Winston doesn't care whether the mud he's throwing is based on fact (as it sometimes is with the so-called Treaty principles) or on fiction (who remembers the non-grounding of the Cook Strait ferry?), all he cares about is that the mud-throwing is reported — preferably accompanied by a full-length archive photograph of himself. And just by pure chance some of the mud that needs to be thrown and wouldn't otherwise be chucked gets an airing that it wouldn't otherwise get. When he can be bothered.

4. Winston is not a professional Maori.

Unlike countless others of rich beige hue who make a career out of that one solitary attribute (a fellow high up the Labour ranks for no other reason springs immediately to mind) Winston has eschewed that easy road to sucking off the state tit … and found another.

3. Entertainment value.

In a sea of grey, bland parliamentary conformity Winston stands out – and that’s just in the NZ First caucus room. When Winston wakes up every three years, whatever else you might think he does at least makes the news worth watching again. Just like you’re glued to it now.

2. Winston keeps the country safer.

This is perhaps the most important job that Winston does for the country. He is like a fusebox for dangerous idiocy.
There are other places in which the moonbat xenophobe constituency on which Winston has a stranglehold has produced the likes of the alt-right, the “race realists,” the “new nationalists,’ the various National Fronts and other varieties of destructive poison led by bigots who believe in the hatred themselves; captured in other countries by thugs that are serious about the hatred they’re whipping up. They take the xenophobic bigotry seriously and do serious damage with it.
Not Winston. Winston can spout it so the bigots believe it, but cares about it only enough to deliver him a nice office and a sea of new Italian suits.
So where other places have right-wing nationalism delivering dangerous political probems, in New Zealand instead it delivers the levers and baubles of office to one Winston Peters. Who enjoys the baubles and does as little as he possibly can with the levers. This, you must agree, is a Very Very Good Thing indeed.

And now, the topmost Good Thing about Winston Peters is ...

1. No government!

Having man as lazy as Winston as a cabinet minister is certainly like having no government, given how little he gets done, but there’s even more about Winston to excite a libertarian!

Any idea how many weeks this post-election period before we have a government? Remember the extended negotiations of 1996 when for several exciting weeks the country didn’t have a government (and as people noticed the sky wasn’t falling the leadung business daily politfelt compelled to write the headline: "The Libertarianz were right all along”).
We have Winston to thank for those few brief periods of respite. And as long as Winston First and his bunch of tailor’s dummies are in with a shout, we have the exciting prospect every three years of an extended period in which we actually no government at all. If only that happy state of affairs could be replicated more often.

UPDATE: Don Brash this morning suggests an eleventh Good Thing:

It looks as if whether to have a referendum on the Maori electorates will becoming a defining issue in the post-election negotiations.
"Mr Peters has said having such a referendum is one of his 'bottom-lines.' Jacinda Ardern said this morning that under no circumstances will she agree to such a referendum, and Duncan Garner (on Three’s AM Show) said that agreeing to such a referendum would be 'cutting [Labour’s] own throat.'
"So if Mr Peters remains adamant that a referendum is one of his bottom-lines, and if Jacinda Ardern remains firm, then we will have a National-NZ First Government.

"Of course, Mr Peters can’t afford to admit that a referendum is an absolutely firm bottom-line: if he does admit that, then his bargaining power with National is gone.

"But what are the merits of the case? … "

Read on for the answer ...