Several days ago Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters did something quite astounding.
On Wednesday morning he appeared on Newstalk ZB and called for an immediate end to the Level 2 lockdown.
He was unequivocal in his position, saying things such as: "We have been in compulsory lockdown for far too long,” and "every day, every hour, every week we delay - we put back our recovery."
He also made the following statement: "the Prime Minister has actually admitted that - at the Cabinet meeting she said it, there was serious concerns from New Zealand First that this was taking too long and we should have got out of this into a better space as fast as possible."
That last comment caused some to publicly question whether Peters had broken offical Parliamentary rules by speaking to the media about Cabinet business.
It seems to me that very few people have stopped to consider just how extraordinary this incident was.
Winston Peters is a man who has now spent over 33 years in Parliament, making him the longest serving MP currently in the House.
To give some perspective, this is only seven years shy of the 40 year record set by our longest ever serving politician Henry Greathead Rex Mason (1926 - 1966).
There is only one reason Peters has lasted so long in the cutthroat world of politics - he is a very shrewd operator.
This is a man who has survived multiple scandals and who came back stronger after an election loss that ejected him from Parliament for a term in 2008.
What makes this all the more impressive is that he is at the helm of a minor party.
In a nutshell; Winston Peters is a sly fox who is renowned for doing whatever is in the best political interests of Winston Peters and New Zealand First.
Which is exactly why we should all be sitting up and paying attention after what he did on Wednesday morning.
This was a man who has previously thrown his full support behind earlier lockdown measures, suddenly renouncing the current Level 2 lockdown restrictions in the strongest terms possible.
He even called for the immediate opening of a Trans-Tasman bubble between Australia and New Zealand.
The question we should be asking ourselves is why would such a self-interested political operator, who has endorsed the previous lockdown measures, now be saying that the current situation is untenable?
One explanation is that he knows that there is an election looming and his future depends on his ability to campaign without being impeded by Level 2 restrictions.
His political fortunes now also rely on him unshackling himself from the current Labour Government.
He needs to resurrect his political brand of the commonsense everyman who isn’t afraid to challenge the powers that be for the sake of the little people. That will be a lot harder to sell if he is he is still wedded at the hip to a major party come election time.
There are some glaring problems with this explanation however.
Firstly, the Government is riding a wave of popular support right now, and it would seem a very risky move to put yourself in direct opposition to the sole reason for that support; Jacinda Ardern.
Secondly, Peters is currently privy to all of the same data, reports and Cabinet discussions as the Prime Minister.
This means that he is in the perfect position to know just how serious the current thereat of Covid-19 is in New Zealand.
As a wily political campaigner he would surely know that calling for an end to Level 2 lockdown restrictions before it was safe enough to do so would be political suicide.
All it would take is for the relevant experts to present contrary data to the media and publicly condemn his calls as an irresponsible threat to the lives of many New Zealanders (with the most at-risk group being his core constituency.)
This wouldn’t just be a public humiliation, it would also be a major own goal that would seriously undermine his chances in September.
Winston has survived the dog-eat-dog game of politics for far too long to try such an amateurish and foolhardy move, especially so close to a general election.
So why then would Winston Peters suddenly be so very keen to publicly condemn and distance himself from the Level 2 lockdown?
I think that the data and reports he is now hearing in those Cabinet meetings has him extremely worried.
One concern I have had for several weeks now is that our Government has been captured by a cadre of technocrats who no longer simply want to flatten the curve, but now want to stomp out Covid-19 altogether.
Achieving such an outcome would be the stuff of scientific history, and having your name associated with it would probably bring a lot of renown.
Alternatively, one could be motivated by a misplaced sense of obligation to save the world with your scientific abilities, or perhaps even a disproportionate fear of the worst excesses of Covid-19.
Regardless of the reasons why, to achieve such an outcome you would need to take actions that would inflict massive economic damage - the likes of which we have not seen in this country before.
This wouldn’t just mean unprecedented job losses and personal economic hardship for untold numbers of Kiwis. It would also mean mammoth social problems, increased suicide rates, and a new healthcare catastrophe caused by major economic downturn.
It seems to me that if an astute political operator was privy to data which shows that Covid-19 is safely contained, and the current Level 2 lockdown is now worsening the economic carnage, he would want to publicly distance himself from that as soon as he possibly could.
This way, come election time, and as more New Zealanders begin to wake up to the reality of how harmful the lockdown has been to our economy, he can say ‘I warned them, and you know that I tried to stop this.’
What better way to position yourself for such an outcome than to appear on New Zealand’s most popular breakfast radio show one morning to strongly denounce the current lockdown restrictions?
What would be even more effective is if you told the listeners that the Prime Minster has acknowledged your opposition to the ongoing lockdown.
Thus forcing her to publicly verify your opposition in the media later that same day by declaring that “from time to time, we will agree we will share differing views in public.”
This way you create a win-win situation for your yourself and your party.
If the Government holds firm to their lockdown strategy you get to distance yourself from the damage come election time.
If they loosen it, you get to posture yourself as the essential voice of reason who kept the Government accountable and saved the country from a worse fate.
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