Cold Comfort: Conservatives Minority Govt in NZ?

Meanwhile the Labour Party's official bigged up Tory blogger of choice Iain Dale is getting comfort where he can. In the antipodes, 12 hours ahead of us in New Zealand. or should that be 30 years minus 12 hours behind us?

Anyway. After losing deposit and some 40% of their vote in Glenrothes and seeing their kissing cousin Canary McCain vanishing into the abyss in the USA, Conservative types have some comfort in winning power in New Zealand.

Which reminds me. If memory serves. Can't find any web documentation for this one just now:

The most popular Fifer of the moment, Gordon Brown, was once believe it or not in mid-eighties a wet-behind-the-ears new-ish MP. But already opposition front bench spokesman for Trade and Industry.

He was sent as I recall, by shadow Foreign Secretary colleague of the time, Curly Kaufman who had a night at the theatre lined up, to handle a radio interview with a radio station from "down under".

As a conscientious young MP Gordon boned up on all the recent developments in Australia ... he was hot to trot with everything off pat ... only to find himself speaking from a Portland House studio to Radio New Zealand over their election results and the like. Whoops.

Kiwi Blog has a running commentary, the government stats service draws a misleading bar chart making it look like the Cons were miles off an overall majority, but sadly they do have have 59 of the 122 seats declared, with all seats counted. I'm not sure whether there are a few more "list" seats to be announced. Probably not. The usual quota in the House of Representatives is 120. As of now: National 59, Labour 43, Greens 8, ACT and Maori parties 5 each, Indies 2.