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Another poll. Another rush of fevered opinion, and yet still so far away from an election. 

The poll business is booming. Once upon a time we had just the two TV networks in the game, but now they’ve been joined by others. 

Keeping the opinion writers in business and politics as the leading news driver in this country. 

So this one was paid for by the Taxpayers Union and it breathlessly reports that New Zealand First is on the rise and is now the third most popular party.  

Winston may be 80, but it looks like he’s here to stay.

And the two major parties are pretty equal at 30 odd each - there is no dominant party right now in New Zealand. 

Other than that, the other take away is that we don’t like the leaders of the major parities.  

Both leaders have popularity rankings less than 20%, and that’s because they’re both demonstrably a bit average. 

That’s particularly concerning for National and the Prime Minister, who learned that 80% of New Zealanders don’t rate him as PM. 

It reflects a deep dis-ease about where the country finds itself.  In a week where we found that we grew not one jot in the last financial quarter, people are wondering why we’ve got so stuck in the mire. 

National’s easy answer at the last election was that Labour was useless.  

But 18 months into National’s governance I feel people are still wondering where we’re going and whether, maybe, they’re a bit useless too. 

I blame politics and the urge to politicise every issue and polarise the voters. Our current default position from our politicians is the other side is crap. Vote for us. 

But the country is saying you’re both crap. There is no truth teller out there leading the way through the murk. 

And in this vacuum of leadership Winston shines by just doing the basics as a Foreign Minister well and not being useless.