Even if National loses the Northland by-election (which I don't think it will), things won't change quite as much as voters are being told they will. So why all the forecasts of pestilence, blasting, mildew and locusts if Winston Peters wins?
Read MoreJohn Key
The opposite of intervention isn’t peace
John Key hasn’t made the case for military intervention, which doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Making the case means understanding what drives people to join ISIS and resisting the temptation to retro-fit our own causes onto theirs.
It means staring at the consequences of intervening - and not intervening.
It requires communicating clearly to New Zealanders, the legal premise for intervention, and telling us what peace looks like.
There are a few myths to debunk first.
Read MoreA fight with limits: The right choice against Islamic State
I've wrestled with this for days and part of me still wishes we could give peace more of a chance, but the limited and precise deployment chosen by the government seems to be the right choice for the time and threat
Read MoreAussie foreign minister says NZ's Iraq strategy plays into terrorists' hands
John Key has put a time limit on our stay in Iraq, but Australia isn't impressed with that kind of thinking, showing the Wellington-Canberra divide on Iraq
Read MoreThe alternatives to war: What if we did nothing?
Critics of the government are arguing New Zealand's role in Iraq is pointless... dangerous... or not our fight. But what does the alternative look like?
Read MoreIt's punitive welfare that's pointless, not protest
Protest outside Nats' summer party a necessary act of defiance in face of welfare and housing reforms
Read MoreWhy does one symbol matter, but another does not?
John Key thinks our colonial flag is an outdated symbol that needs replacing. So why is our relationship with the Monarchy any different?
Read MoreHow Shallow is Intellectual Life in New Zealand?
It is not what Eleanor Catton said about the government, but how we respond to what she said.
Read MoreTheme of the Traitor and the Hero
How do you think the kind of society that Eleanor Catton described in her (now infamous) interview would react to someone like Eleanor Catton saying such things in an interview?
Read MoreState of the Nation II - John Key
John Key took social housing head on in his first big speech of the year and in doing so raised the ideological politics of ownership, trying to cast it in a new light
Read MoreState of the Nation I - Andrew Little
Andrew Little kicked off the political year proper with his state of the nation address this morning, and it emphasised that Labour is under new management
Read MoreTilting at Helensvilles' windmills
Could John Key's place in Parliament be under threat from Arthur Taylor's electoral petition? No ... no it couldn't.
Read MoreQuotes of the year, Pundit style
What are the words that captured the year in a few syllables and defined 2014? Read on...
Read MoreAn economic comedy in four acts
A little pre-Christmas fun, looking at Treasury's prediction that National will fail to reach its much-promised surplus through some literary lenses
Read MoreTone it down, John: Sydney seige words seem self-serving
Until we know more about Man Haron Monis and his motivations, John Key should avoid leaping to assumptions and using the case to justify his own political goals
Read MoreU-turn ahead? Or just a foreign buyer snarl up?
Apparently New Zealand didn't need a register of foreign land owners ... until it did. So is National preparing to change tack or is it just getting itself into even more of a tangle?
Read MoreGrumbling About Political Grumblers
It is one thing being in Opposition complaining about what has happened in government; it is another thing to have a viable policy.
Read MoreShe was practiced at the art of deception
In which a little spy agency finds that sometimes you can always get what you want, even if its not what you need.
Read MoreJohn Key: The buck doesn't stop with me
The Gwyn reports reveals much about the failings of the SIS, but it and the government's response to it also reveals much about the political machinations of this Prime Minister
Read MoreI'm not ALWAYS wrong ...
A brief cut-and-paste revisit of what I said at the time about the Dirty Politics allegations about the SIS, OIA and certain bloggers whom we don't name.
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