Week in politics

It is surely tempting fate to say it, but a rather different, more mellow and more constructive Winston Peters now seems to inhabit the parliamentary complex.

The pattern is familiar by now. But that does not make it any easier for those affected. Or the process any less cynical.

The High Court's shock blocking of the sale of the Crafar farms to a Chinese conglomerate has raised more questions than there are currently answers.

So it's goodbye Mr Smile and Wave, and hello Mr Grumpy. Or so the Prime Minister's critics would have you believe.

National's "mixed ownership model" - the innocuous-sounding vehicle tasked with making the party's unpopular privatisation agenda more appetising - paradoxically may yet end up making the partial sell-offs of state corporations even less palatable to voters.

Labour leader David Shearer and Prime Minister John Key had a brief conversation last month on the short walk from the debating chamber to the Legislative Council Chamber for the official opening of Parliament.

The bar had long closed. The dimmed lights in the cavernous functions room had been turned up to full brightness.

Some elements on the left of the political spectrum have long cried wolf about National supposedly having a secret agenda, especially when it comes to privatisation.

Prepare the high altar for sacrifice. The Labour Party can dither no longer. Some of its most sacred cows are in need of slaughtering.

Borrow and hope; tax and spend. For months, that has been Bill English's pithy, double-phrased encapsulation of how Labour would run the economy.