Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour

Kiwiblog

3 days ago

David Seymour said:
Not only is our mission fundamentally hard, but sometimes we've made it harder than necessary. I hesitate to bring it up, but we've burned ourselves on one or two of our own brushfires along the way.
Our perk buster took a perk. Our tough on crime guy got convicted. Our leadership had a civil war. We were subject to an unconventional coup.
In 2012 I wrote an obituary for the ACT Party. I said:
Trauma surgeons at Wellington Political Hospital announced today that the ACT Party was judged clinically dead after succumbing to a grievous assault from Kim Dotcom.
Surgeons battled all night to save the political party, but the accumulated trauma from years of abuse meant that the patient was already in critical condition when Dotcom fell on it, crushing the remaining life out of the teenage political party.
I traversed their many challenges:
Stepdad Richard Prebble moved out, and Father Roger disapproved of Rodney, the new stepdad. They started to argue in front of the kids. Even worse, suave Don stole away ACT's first girlfriend, so at age 12 ACT got reduced to two MPs in 2005.
Rodney and Heather just wouldn't stop throwing things at each other. ACT didn't even know who started the fights, but it normally ended up in the middle with the bruises to show from the domestic abuse. CYFS were called in, but the fighting and abuse continued.
A worse bruise came when Rodney and his girlfriend were playing with their model plane and it ended up scarring and concussing ACT. ACT's friends say that ACT's good looks never fully recovered from that. But worse was to come when David stole someone's wallet and ID as a joke. It was no joke, when it turned out that David had done this before, and ACT knew about it and never told anyone. ACT got beaten up by all its mates at school for not telling them about this earlier.
Even at this stage, ACT had some hope of a normal life ahead. But then Don turned up again and told ACT that he was going to take over or he would beat ACT up so badly it would die. So ACT was forced to become friends with Don and Don then got ACT stoned on cannabis. Some kids can handle cannabis, but not ACT. It fell off a cliff breaking its arms and legs.
I concluded:
ACT's friends are very sad at this prognosis. They recall the good times they had with ACT. They remember the good things ACT achieved. They don't want to see ACT dead and buried, but they know that true friends don't let mates suffer in agony. They know it is time to turn off the life support, and let ACT die.
ACT had got 1.1% at the 2011 election and only hing on with John Banks winning Epsom. They generally polled around 0.5% for the next three years and got 0.7% in 2014, again just winning Epsom with David Seymour as the sole MP.
2017 saw an even worse result with just 0.5%. The thought that in eight years time Seymour would be Deputy Prime Minister would have got you locked up in Carrington. And in 2018, ACT continued to poll under 1%. But in 2019 their support ticked up to 2% and just before Covid struck they even made 3.5%. Covid-19 saw their support drop back to 1.8% but then it climbed and by June they had hit 5%, then 6%, then 7% and got 7.6%. An amazing performance, and not a flash in the pan due to an election debate worm.
Then despite all those new MPs, the much larger caucus kept it together and as National has internal issues, ACT hit 18.5% in late 2021. They dropped back as National recovered but still went on to get an increased vote of 8.6% in 2023, and the coalition agreement that saw David Seymour become Deputy Prime Minister on Sunday.
I am very glad I was wrong in 2012, and it is a tribute to ACT and Seymour that they have gone from a 0.5% party to a major force in NZ politics.