After the game

So, they've arrested the entire French rugby team? We're such poor losers.

Winner. Crop the bum-fluff off the top there, much better. He means business this guy, he's been thwarted twice before in electorate show-downs and he'll be wanting something fulfilling to occupy his time on the back benches now he's finally made it. I'll guess he'll be given a few questions to ask to the Foreign Affairs and Disarmament Ministers in parliament to start with.
And why did National's candidate get annihilated? How is it that a National government elected with over a million party votes barely half a year ago and almost 30% of the electorate vote in Mt Albert go to 17.1% of the vote? - and only a thousand in front of the Greens? The result is so catastrophic that this is indisputably a textbook case for how not to run a by-election campaign.

Many have offered advice to Melissa Lee and National - every blog I've read this month has had lots of good, sound advice for her and team blue - but at no stage does it look like any of it was taken. What a disaster. The parties will no doubt present reports to their respective boards on the by-election and I would love to see National's. How far down the 2011 list will she be?

Pick the right candidate: FAIL

Total party support for your candidate: FAIL

Pick the right issues: FAIL (Thought it would be law/order/crime)

Communicate/co-ordinate: leadership/head office/branch/teams/candidate: FAIL (esp. over tunnel option - the timing sacrificed her, but the lack of communication was churlish.)

Campaign management: FAIL (No evidence of campaign manager, but on-the-ground visibility and coverage as a sub-category was a PASS - however I'm quite confident that Ravi would have had more, esp. print/mail)

Candidate management: FAIL (Having a junior Cabinet Minister hovering around nervously anticipating his candidate's next brain-fart is not management).

Learn from your mistakes/adapt in field: FAIL
and so on... everyone will have their own political autopsy to perform. Is this the last we've seen of Melissa Lee?