“But MPs in those parties have to accept that they are hitch-hikers. They must laugh at the leader’s jokes, and skip in step with him, even if the leader can’t skip, or changes step without warning”.

I should have anticipated resentment (like that of Lindsay Mitchell) to my shorthand for concern about  sycophancy in parties that hang off a leader’s seat. It was not a coded insult, so clearly explanation is needed.

It was not aimed at ACT, though I worried when ACT changed its policy in 2005 to focus on a seat, rather than just the party vote. As it turned out the decision saved ACT  in Parliament. But there is a cost.

I watched from close range the travails of MPs in “leader’s coat-tail parties” over two terms.

I remember, for example, Ron Mark smacking himself on the head beside me after he and Peter Brown had done a tradesmanlike job throughout a long afternoon, articulating a coherent position on some Bill. At around 5pm (when the Parliamentary radio broadcast audience is augmented by commuter drivers) Winston swept in. He absorbed the debate for a few quiet minutes (without a word of enquiry to his troops). He launched a crackling speech, full of quotable derision for the idiots on the wrong side of the debate. Then he swept out.

“Silly me” said Ron facetiously. “I must have forgotten. Today is Thursday. Thursday’s the day we support the government”.

Winston had just demolished the position Ron had supported all afternoon.

That kind of highhandedness is open to a “party” leader who controls his followers by the veto he holds over who can hang off his seat. From what I heard from my Green MP colleagues they suffered the same from Anderton in the previous Parliament.

Gordon Copeland has experienced it at the hands of Peter Dunne (think anti-smacking bill), with Dunne not needing to worry about the policies dear to the parties and party voters lured into his spider’s embrace, election after election.

Sure, MPs in all parties must endure in silence contradictions and mistakes from their leaders. Cabinet solidarity no doubt offers that trying experience daily. Without that discipline a party could never govern. The people rightly worry about electing people who can not sort out who is in charge. 

Absorbing vicarious crap with grace is an experience not confined to politics. Every good lawyer will have had to change step without warning, to do the best one can for a client whose mouth and mind are competing to sink him. Even when the client is blaming the inevitable debacle on his ‘idiot lawyer’, client confidentiality means that all one can do is grit the teeth and think of the consoling invoice.

But there is a healthy constraint on the leaders of real Parliamentary parties. They lead by consent. If they lose the confidence of a bare majority of their team, or test their tolerance too far, they’ll be sacked. Accordingly, there are strong natural disciplines on any temptation they might have to change step without warning. Without needing conscious thought, they will minimise the times when they cause their team to say “our mistake” for looking out of step with the leader.

I did not set out to hurt the faith of decent ACT people in their leader. That faith will no doubt strengthen as National sensibly holds close to the centre, leaving ACT plenty of ideological space for dry economics and libertarian social policies.

But without trying I can think of recent public examples of curiously idiosyncratic ACT voting. For example, I have not been able to understand the ACT vote on the EFB companion Bill that legitimised Labour use of Parliamentary funds for electioneering in the next election. It may represent high principle, or it may be a symptom of “Leader’s coat-tails party” syndrome.

Rodney Hide’s first reading speech purported to explain but left me baffled.

Many will no doubt feel that it is worth risking personal high-handedness to support a ‘leader’s coat-tail’ party. Such parties were made possible by the odd electoral design decision to allow them as exceptions to the minimum 5% party vote requirement for MMP representation.

I think it was a mistake.

I welcome the prospect of independence in Parliament offered by personal seats. But to give their holders the power to hang pet parties off those seats has been expensive. The 5% minimum was meant to prevent the Italian pattern emerging, where party fractionalisation added to the paralysis and unsavoury horse-trading associated with coalition building where many small groups are each given veto power by the need to get a 50% voting agreement.

Some fragmentation makes MMP work. H Clark has had the wit and good fortune to be able to trade potential support among the Maori Party, the Greens and NZ First. That may in turn have been possible because three way oligopolies are unstable (do not facilitate monopoly conduct -why the Commerce Commission wants to keep The Warehouse out of the hands of either of the two big supermarket chains).

If there had been only two contenders instead of three it would have been easier for the two to gang up on the government and set the agenda.

The gaming possibilities after the next election must have the minor parties salivating. For me, had I felt able to stay as an ACT member after the last election, the prospects of Ministerial office would have been greater. Experience here and overseas has seen minor party MPs with a disproportionate share of Ministerial posts. 

PS
I hope there was some sound reason for the curious position of ACT on the companion bill. I understand that Rodney has shown what he can contribute to the House, with outstanding recent speeches on the EFB.