Let's twist again
New Zealand Listener|November 25 - December 1, 2023
Waiting for an announcement about who gets what in our new government is enough to send anyone around the bend.
Michele Hewitson
Let's twist again

Have you lost the will to live yet? Don't bother answering. That's a rhetorical question. We have all lost the will to live. At the time of writing - having to write that is the very definition of having lost the will to live - we have been waiting a month for something, anything, to happen. We are all still locked in that room with the clock that stopped on election night.

As political tactics go, it's not a bad strategy. If we've all lost the will to live we won't care about the outcome of National's cobbled-together government, as long as something, anything, happens. Oh, they all agreed Winston Peters can be President for Life? Whatever. Now, can we go back to our lives?

Scoff not. Stranger things have happened in politics. Donald Trump became the president of the United States, and may yet be president again. Meanwhile, in Britain, former Tory prime minister David Cameron has just been made foreign secretary. Cameron was arguably Britain's most divisive leader since Margaret Thatcher because of his bonkers Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union.

Cameron is not even an MP any more. He had banked on Britain voting to stay, and went off in an almighty huff after the vote didn't go his way. No matter. Cameron can be in the Cabinet again, though not in the House of Commons, by being made a peer and sitting in the House of Lords. Political commentator and associate editor of Britain's The Spectator, Rod Liddle, said Cameron's appointment was like "pulling a dead rabbit out of a hat". So there you go: why not Peters as President for Life?

WHERE'S WINSTON?

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