Yes, this is coming in comically late, but I have the productivity for this now that I didn’t before, and I really want to get this done and off my platter and into the archives. Taking this long to get around to this also affords me the time to steal content from my previous articles without anybody noticing. Let’s see how badly hindsight can cloud my judgement!
The David Cameron award for the biggest upset: Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke
TPM enjoyed the biggest overperformance of any party. Takuta Ferris’s win also impressed greatly, but if we were going to anoint one individual with the award, nothing could compare to such a stark overthrow of a leading Labour figure by another, much younger, wahine Māori - and by a margin of nearly three thousand votes, at that.
Honourable Mention: Melissa Lee
So close! Just eighteen votes in it.
The shaking/crying/throwing up award for the most upset: Damien O’Connor
All these right wing populists talk a big game about despising the media, but only the right wing of Labour has the guts to stand up and tell them to fuck off.
The Leonardo DiCaprio Oscar for Catch Me If You Can: Donald Trump
He got buried under a pile of legal indictments and it won him the primaries LMAO
The Let the Wookie Win Award for Five Dimensional Dejarik: Chris Bishop
I wrote this before the campaign chair decided to force Christopher Luxon at gunpoint to record a hostage video pleading with voters not to make him work with Winston Peters, or else he’d have to really show them by working with Winston Peters. Too clever by half and they bled for it.
Honourable Mention: Whoever recruited Meka Whaitiri
TPM really thought they did something by nabbing one of Labour’s ministers, the only party defection this year (compare that to the UK recently!). Ikaroa-Rāwhiti fit the trend across the Māori electorates where every single incumbent lost their seat…but because TPM had run one of the incumbents, this was the only seat they lost the race for.
If they had just stuck with the respected Heather Te Au-Skipworth against the flawed Whaitiri, they could have had the clean sweep. Instead, just as Waititi won TPM a foothold in 2020, so too has Tanguere-Manuel held onto a fortress for Labour to fan out from in future.
The Baldwin Street award for worst hill to die on: Yevgeny Prigozhin
Launched a coup because he was mad at Putin for not stamping Ukraine into the dust more. Failed. Decided to keep working for Putin instead of getting out of dodge. Literally died for a terrible cause. What a guy.
The Strong Team More Team Better Team award for political management: David Seymour & Brooke Van Velden
Said both with sincerity for ACT’s current caucus holding together and doing their jobs with nary a wayward peep for the third year running, not to mention winning over Andrew Hoggard, and with a healthy sense of irony for all the conspiracy theorists they recruited. Plus…Todd Stephenson.
The Me, Me, Pick Me award for an only child: David Seymour
Seymour has very quickly forgotten the dark years of ACT as a joke that he dragged the party out of, with tremendous effort and discipline. From salivating at the thought of fireworks in the Ministry of Pacific Peoples to beaming that Nelson Mandela would vote for him, Seymour rapidly denigrated in my eyes from a thoughtful policy wonk with a cynical populist edge, to a thoughtful policy wonk with an insufferably irritating personality. There’s “legitimate” stunts to grab the public attention so you can next talk to them about the issues, and there’s turning your brain off and only contributing to the petty, meaningless bickering that makes people so sick of politicians.
The Lazarus with a triple bypass award for political survival: Winston Peters
Stupid railroad plot.
Best prediction: me
For a moment, the gift of prophecy was mine.
Worst prediction: me
A brief, brief moment.
The Rangitata accountability award: Mount Roskill
Michael Wood got his ass kicked for a very unnecessary but extremely insignificant scandal. His electorate may have single handedly changed the future of the Labour Party for years to come.
Honourable Mention: Te Atatū
We came within 131 votes of a Parliament free of Phil Twyford.
The Houdini discountability award: Tauranga
18,980 people voted for Sam Uffindell, practically the same as voted National - 46% of all votes cast in the electorate. To put this in proportion, when Uffindell entered Parliament at the 2022 by-election, before his history was known about, 56% of all votes went for him. A mere 10% drop off in a higher turnout general election is pretty appalling stuff given I think he’s a top five amongst MPs who don’t deserve to be in Parliament.
Runner up: Waiariki
He posted about Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
“Te Pāti Māori absolutely and unequivocally do not support our involvement in this war!...We will no longer have our sovereignty determined by others, whether it is in Canberra, London, Washington, Beijing or Moscow. We will no longer be a political football in the wars of imperial powers. We will no longer act as a Pacific spy base for the Five-Eyes Alliance!
As indigenous people, we should not fight other indigenous peoples on their whenua. We should not be involved in the killing of innocent people. Rather, we should always stand alongside indigenous peoples in their fight for their sovereignty over their own lands.”
I get that Labour’s votes halved from 2020 to 2023, and TPM dominated the Māori electorates, and I get that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a key foreign policy issue in New Zealand, let alone an issue overall, but progressing from an 836 vote majority in 2020 to a 15,891 majority in 2023 after posting support for violent Russian imperialism is pretty wild. Any other party’s leader or co-leader would have faced a backlash for this, and in the absence of that backlash, his own party failed to step up and demand better of him.
The Frozen Peaches award for best use of free speech: Leo Molloy, Wayne Brown, Sir Graham Henry, Guy Williams, Sean Plunket, Shane Jones, Judith Collins and everybody else who showed up
This debate sounds like an absolute dissociative fever dream. Nobody got so much as a rap on the knuckles for soaking up the laughs at jokes like:
‘Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau was absent, he said, because “she’s on the piss”. Then he said, “She might be here but we wouldn’t recognise her because she wouldn’t have her makeup on.”
‘Veteran NewstalkZB journalist Barry Soper, also absent, had sent a note saying, “I’m at the maternity ward, awaiting the birth of my next wife.”’
I’m reconsidering the Me Me Pick Me award already.
The “GY!BECIgJWTFAYTA?” award for eloquent rhetoric: Vladimir Putin
Honourable Mention: Vivek Ramaswamy
“I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here.” -Chris Christie
“Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” -Nikki Haley
He lost half his votes for ninety minutes on stage and decided his best way back in was to use the next debate to criticise Haley’s daughter for scrolling TikTok. A rare talent.
The Gliding Over All award: James Shaw
Quietly had the best year of his political career as a campaigner.
The Let Me Be Frank award for a collective memory hole: Cyclone Gabrielle
The North Island was devastated and it didn’t even come up in the election.
Honourable Mention: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
America somehow sleepwalked into 1) renominating the president who destroyed federal abortion rights 2) giving him a polling lead. What has Biden being an old moron ever done to actually negatively impact anybody? Trump’s an old moron who hurts Americans, and we know this because he loves to brag loudly about it. Smoke! Fire! Use your common sense!
The Wanna See Me Fall award: Stuart Nash
And there his career goes!
The What’s Gonna Work award for teamwork: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Marama Davidson
Effortlessly sold left unity in the debates at the same time as ACT and National bickered. For all that Labour hard lost, their partners on the flank were remarkably excellent at inoculating themselves against hurting the left’s chances.
The What Is Work award for policy-less politics: Chris Hipkins
He didn’t want to keep any of Jacinda’s policies, he didn’t want to do a wealth tax, he didn’t want to present any education policy in his own wheelhouse, all he wanted to do was give us $4 a week off fruit and veg and soft-launch his new partner (in an amusingly ambiguously gendered moment) at his own defeat party. Why did he want to be Prime Minister so bad?
The “where are they now?” award for moving on: Bill English
Eight years after stepping up to the highest office in the land, somehow brought himself to the even more important task of…conducting a review of Kāinga Ora a much-inferior Prime Minister can decide what to do with.
Best award of the year: Toby Manhire and Ben McKay, presented for “The Log O Wood for blazing out”
“A dangerous year to be flammable, and three ousted MPs share this sorry prize. Michael Wood, gone. Michael Woodhouse, also gone. Sarah Pallett? Farewell. Megan Woods remains, but is advised to relocate her office to the parliamentary pool.”
Bars.
Politician of the Year: Winnie P
Believe you me, take a good hard scan through this year and you will find nobody else who excelled in practically every way at getting their desired political outcome. One of his most impressive performances yet: he did all this without his usual offer in his toolbox of being able to go with either major party. An object lesson on the successful use of such often misunderstood concepts in momentum, attention, and timing your run.
Honourable Mention: Christopher Luxon
This sounds like an incredibly weird take, given how frequently I rag on him, and you’d think I’d nominate Nicola Willis instead. She’s not getting it because she was their Finance Spokesperson, she designed their daft tax cuts, and while Luxon’s interview with Jack Tame on the subject was a nightmare, I blame the person who puts up a bad product over the person who has to sell it.
No, Christopher Luxon gets the award because I read Blue Blood recently. (Thank you to our wonderful libraries for making this possible!) He doesn’t come out looking particularly great in the text, but Andrea Vance really establishes how everybody in National overreached and got their chance to influence the party’s direction, and a good chunk of them did a horrific job. Judith Collins could not lead. Nothing suggests Mark Mitchell could present himself up to the task; little counts against him, either, but regardless, he wasn’t able to muster a mandate within National for the gig. And if Simon Bridges had returned, National would probably have lost the 2023 election. I’m dead serious, I think he really was that bad.
It was Christopher Luxon who took on the leadership without much experience, and had the wisdom to assemble such a smart and trustworthy front bench. All that happened in years before 2023, but he retained the wisdom to defer to them, from letting Nicola step up for him time and again to trusting Chris Bishop’s campaign strategy even when it was a bit rubbish. Luxon is not a good candidate.
But, once he was finally put under the strain of election season, he held up. He was warmer and more natural with everyday Kiwis than anybody expected. He didn’t look grotesquely out of touch. He didn’t cause any disastrous debates. And he prosecuted a message with discipline and vigour that, on Election Night, saw a solid result for National that handed neither ACT nor NZFirst, let alone the left, their best case scenarios. Christopher Luxon gets to be Politician of the Year because, in a year of shockingly poor political performance, he was good enough. Cs get degrees.
My best wishes to National’s front bench to steal this one from him and leave him in the dust in the coming years.
2024’s brightest prospect: My Secret Project
If you know, you know. If you don’t know, keep an ear to the ground.
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