Election cycles drive up the feeling that it's time for a change and new governments get honeymoons.
Both are at work in New Zealand now.
The size and magnitude of Labour's defeat has not sunk in.
The highest electorate swing against Labour was nearly 30% - MMP proportional representation cushioned this effect.
In 1996, Labour got a lower vote than in 1990, when we got booted out, the lowest vote since the 1920s, yet we were in government in three years.
Labour's big job is to analyse what happened and why. Why, when for a decade the global economy enjoyed its best growth ever?
Unemployment was low, huge expenditures were directed at health and education. There was a feeling that while the leadership had mastered the necessary economic themes, there was little substance to back up the "spin".
New Zealand endured a series of publicity-savvy cliches like the "knowledge wave" - then we were going to make billions out of climate change that later would cost billions?
Red tape-cutting initiatives were laughed at because they often made matters worse.
Closing the gap, another worthy goal, was quickly forgotten.
Last-minute, opportunistic law-and-order suggestions to ban gangs were counterproductive.
Good policies to get families cheaper prescriptions and doctor's visits were lost because the systemic problems in our hospitals went unaddressed.
National's promise to uncap doctors' fees was not exposed. Seventy years ago, Labour established a good socialist system of public funds for people to go to a local doctor, who owned their own businesses (the best of a mixed social economy).
The battle between the state and government has been simple. Labour would say: "We want to give another $10 subsidy for kids, or the elderly, to go to the doctor. Doctors, please pass that money on."
The doctors would say: "We won't accept socialist control."
The Labour government successfully navigated this.
But Labour's decline goes deeper: they became so unified, so good at politics and paying off sector groups in good economic times they missed out on the basic values of working New Zealanders.
Their attacks on National's John Key as a "rich prick" missed the mark.
Working people, the battlers, the lawn-mowing democracy who want their own homes, a holiday in Sydney, want their kids to do better, don't despise success.
They want part of it.
For generations, class envy went upwards.
Poor people looking at the rich and thinking they weren't getting their fair go.
That was true, especially in the closed-economy days, when businesses were subsidised and protected.
Now, class envy doesn't just go upwards, it goes downwards. Battlers, who do everything right, feel they pay too much for sector groups who get handouts, benefits, special considerations they didn't get.
I suspect the biggest swing from Labour to National was the normally reliable migrant and ethnic vote.
The largest meeting of the election cycle was a mass Asian protest against crime in South Auckland.
Immigrants who had nothing when they came to this country, worked hard, started a business, sent their kids to universities to be our doctors, lawyers and accountants, ask: "Why do people who aren't prepared to work keep getting handouts and cultural exceptions?"
Labour, for generations, was the natural liberal home for migrants. National was seen to be unsympathetic, even hostile.
Our greatest Labour leader, Peter Fraser, understood this.
He said how he hated slackers, and if he had his way, slackers would be put in a tank of water and forced to hand-pump the water, and drown if they didn't pull their weight.
Wherever there was a social problem, there was a television campaign and a well-meaning commission whose values often jarred.
People groaned when the Children's Commissioner said we had to balance the artistic needs of suburban kids and property rights of homeowners, driving the graffiti debate.
A battler who has taken a second job to build a fence should vote for that?
This was a "values" election as much as a general election.
Labour believes in merit, a fair go, regardless of race, gender, geography, income, or accident of birth.
But that's not how it's seen now.
In Phil Goff and Annette King we have leaders who understand this. They have 13 new MPs, they can win sooner than people think.
But they have to turn the page.
People didn't vote for National because they wanted new faces on the same policies.
I hope National think that, but it will be the global economic situation and the response to this challenge that will decide the next election.
• Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and a former director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
