When it rains it pours, and it’s pouring for the National Party isn’t it?  

21% in that poll last night is horrific, but given the horrors of the last couple of weeks, really no surprise. 

This does nothing but reinforce the same point that we keep making, which is Collins has to go. At some point. 

Why don’t we just deal with the thing that you want to know: Who takes over?  

From what I can see you got two realistic options that are obvious to us right now: Simon Bridges or Chistopher Luxon. 

Your choice is between the known and the unknown. 

If I was forced to bet, I would go for a combo of the two: Luxon as leader, Bridges as deputy. 

This is not a novel suggestion; it's been floating around as an idea for maybe about six months. 

The reason I am open to it as a concept is because they each bring something the other needs. 

Bridges is damaged goods. he’s redeemed himself to a point, but his unfavorability ratings are still really high. According to politik.co.nz 50% of people still don’t like him. 

Luxon has a clean slate so he’s the guy who needs to run top of the ticket. 

But Luxon has bugger all experience in politics and so he runs the risk of doing a Muller and just stuffing it up. 

Bridges helps him here because the problem with Muller was, he had a terrible team around him of inexperienced or flighty people. 

Bridges though knows how to do politics. 

He’s the guy who managed to keep the National Party polling higher than Labour for a long time even though he was desperately unpopular. 

But still now’s not the time.  

A lockdown is a crisis and you don’t roll leaders in a crisis. It’s a bad look.  

As bad as it is for National under Collins - and 20% is bad - they’ve got keep her on for a while yet.