Labour's decision to support the free trade agreement with India should have surprised nobody. It was always going to be the outcome, with the outstanding question being just when Labour would announce its support for the deal. As this column noted in early February, from the outset Labour has been effectively over a barrel on the issue. 

With its substantial domestic Indian voting constituency and its own constant pursuit of free trade agreements during its two previous spells in government since 1999, Labour could never oppose the Indian agreement, its bumptious early rhetoric criticising the deal notwithstanding. Given the size of the Indian economy and the potential opportunities it presents to New Zealand exporters, Labour's economic credibility would have been destroyed, had it done otherwise.

As Winston Peters is wont to say, words matter in politics. Labour could not credibly talk the free trade game it has for more than the two decades, then not support a deal as significant as the India free trade agreement and expect to retain any credibility.

Peters' mantra also applies to the week's other political non-event - the unedifying spat with National over Peters' criticisms of Christopher Luxon promoting a Caucus confidence vote on his leadership of the National Party. According to Peters, this was an extremely unwise move. Rather than shut down the issue as Luxon wants, Peters claims it simply invites more confidence votes over time as more things go wrong, until one eventually succeeds and Luxon is toppled.

National's response was that all Peters' criticisms show is that he is preparing to switch coalition allegiances to Labour and that voters should be on guard against this. It is a long bow, but, in any case, if Peters' assertion that words matter in politics still holds, the week's tit-for-tat spat has since been rendered quite meaningless – by Peters himself.

In a subsequent Facebook post this week, Peters showed why. He wrote, “four years ago in 2022, a full year before the last election, we ruled out working with the Labour Party. We did that because the left are full of woke self-confessed communists who would turn our country into a basket case. Nothing has changed. In fact, they are even worse. No, we won’t do a deal with Labour or their Marxist and separatist mates. It is astounding the amount of time this has been spent living rent free in some people’s heads - including media who keep asking the same stupid question that I have already answered multiple times. Anyone who says anything otherwise is ‘mischief making’ and ‘scaremongering’ who need to start focussing on things that kiwis care about most instead of personal petty reckons.”

On that basis, assuming those words will continue to matter to Peters, New Zealand First will not be decamping to support a Labour-led government assuming office. While that might make the prospects of the current coalition remaining in office after the election look a little stronger, it does not make them any easier.

New Zealand First’s strategy has shifted markedly over the last few months. For most of this term, it was understandably obsessed with overcoming the hoodoo that had seen it tossed out of Parliament altogether – in 2008 and 2020 – after a term in government. Now that seems unlikely to occur at this election, according to the current polls, New Zealand First has noticeably shifted its focus, as its poll support has risen, to aiming to become a dominant, if not the dominant, player in a future centre-right government.

Peters is therefore using his experience to position himself, perhaps more than his party, as the wise owl the government needs. Recent upheavals in the National Party and the Prime Minister’s frequent displays of political inexperience simply play into his hands in this regard. That is what this week’s stoush with National over its leadership – and even his lecture to Labour on the free trade agreement – were all about, reminding them and voters generally of the centrality of New Zealand First in the current political equation. Even so, many will baulk at Peters' description of himself as a beacon of stability, given New Zealand First’s disruptive record over the years.

Over the next few months until the election, a weakened National Party therefore faces having to fend off not only Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Māori in the quest for government, but also its partner New Zealand First, increasingly determined to dominate and lead, if not numerically then certainly morally, a government of the centre-right. To that end, expect more meaningless forays of the type Peters indulged in over the last week, intended less for their specific impact than to keep National on the defensive, and Peters on the media front page.

Words do matter in politics, whether it be about coalition prospects or breaking up the supermarket duopoly or the electricity gentailers. At present, Peters understands this far better than Luxon or Hipkins, and he will be content just to keep telling them so, right the way through to election day.