Perhaps it has been a misnomer talking about the Boag faction in the Nat Civil War. Boag has the networks and money but it’s the man she brought into Parliament in 2002 that Collins will have to roll if she wants to be PM before the election. And it’s Key who screwed her on the defamation suits, signalling she should go ahead, then denying her political and monetary backing from Cabinet.
It’s interesting to see the Collins faction openly using National’s 44% polling in the latest Roy Morgan. Just when our sources inside National were saying the strong showing in the TVNZ poll had taken the heat out of leadership speculation, this new poll, and, more importantly, the trend, have re-confirmed a basic truth- National will lose the next election under Key.
Lusk writing as Whaleoil has been quick to highlight the facts for National MPs (Simon, it rather gives the game away when Slater posts that he’s off hunting this weekend but the posts continue unabated). Lusk notes that four electorate MPs, all female would lose their seats in a uniform swing and is promising a similar post on which list MPs would be gone. And don’t forget twenty Nat ministers’ jobs are on the line. There’s also posts on UK conservatives who think Cameron is too soft and leading them to defeat, implying the same is true here. We’re told this is only the iceberg tip of the taking campaign going on inside National.
The Collins faction turning their sights (and sites) on Key is due, we’re told, to several factors: his stated intention to stay on, his positively aligning himself with the Boag faction -most publicly by boxing Collins into a corner on the defamation suits while defending Pullar, and his falling poll numbers.
How long before this all re-erupts into the ugly public spats we saw in March, who knows.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress