John MacDonald: Luxon and Hipkins have nothing to crow about

On Saturday afternoon, a mate asked me what I thought was going to happen in the election.

I said that I thought Labour would win the party vote but National would win more seats. And that Opportunity would get in with a 5.2 percent share of the party vote.

That was as much as I was willing to predict. And I was pretty much spot on.

Although, yes, at this point Labour is ahead on party vote. But it’s pretty much neck-and-neck.

Labour is on 29.36% and National is on 29.21%. So technically, Labour is ahead. But there are a minuscule number of actual votes between them.

I was right too about National getting more electorate seats than Labour.

The preliminary results show National having 42 seats. All of them electorate seats. And Labour has 36. Of those, 21 are electorate seats and 15 are list seats.

And, despite other commentators saying otherwise, I was right about Opportunity getting into Parliament. I predicted that they would get 5.2 percent. At the moment, they’re sitting on 5.96 percent.

So, no surprises on those fronts.

What I am surprised about, though, is the way National leader Christopher Luxon has reacted compared to his coalition partners.

NZ First’s Winston Peters and ACT’s David Seymour have been somewhat reserved. Especially when you consider that David Seymour, in particular, has a bit to crow about, with ACT having its best result.

He’s pitching himself as the next Finance Minister. But, overall, I think the ACT and NZ First leaders are conducting themselves as they should, given how things are after the weekend.

Christopher Luxon, though. What a bombastic showing he made on Saturday night.

It was midnight before he took to the stage after shaking hands and hugging every Tom, Dick and Harry at the National Party event in Auckland.

Yesterday, he was at it again. Telling reporters that he thought National had run a great campaign. Despite the fact that its party share at the moment is down 9 percent on the last election.

Luxon needs to listen to the advice he gave reporters yesterday. He told them to calm down. He needs to do that too.

He’s now also looking like going back on his word not to work in any way, shape or form with the Opportunity Party. Which doesn’t surprise me at all.

We all knew when he was ruling them out so emphatically during the campaign that he’d be on the phone to Qiulae Wong if he needed to.

My pick is he’s talking the way he is after Mark Mitchell and Erica Stanford both said on Saturday night, before Luxon had even turned up at the event in Auckland, that National would have to look at working with Opportunity.

As soon as they said that, Christopher Luxon had no choice. Otherwise, he’d be ousted sooner rather than later.

That could still happen. But the olive branch might have bought him a bit more time.

Speaking of time. Labour leader Chris Hipkins is well and truly on borrowed time. Like Luxon, he has nothing to crow about, either.

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