Larry Williams Drive

The fightback has started, hasn’t it? National’s leadership team have clearly come out of yesterday’s caucus meeting with very clear instructions: get the National Party vote back off New Zealand First. And they’ve come out hard. It started with Nicola Willis on Mike Hosking just after 7am, warning that Winston Peters might pick Labour after the next election. The attack from her on that show was so pointed I was actually surprised - because these two are mates. They drink together, they work together, they’re on the same floor as each other in the Beehive. But then, five hours later, the Prime Minister is on The Country with Jamie Mackay, saying almost exactly the same thing. Which tells you Nicola didn’t just react in the heat of the moment, coming off the high of what happened in caucus. These are the lines they’ve decided to go out with. They have decided to attack New Zealand First. The question is: what took them so long? Because this is what they needed to do months ago, when it became obvious the