Outrage: if the spoils of victory are going to our opponents, we might as well make Goff our leader

Alf has been hugely comforted by the certainty that a cosy job would be found for him, should he quit parliamentary politics. His ministerial mates would stick him on the board of an SOE, a quango or one of umpteen other types of publicly funded organisation.

Their structures provide for oodles of political appointments, and they enable our ministers to dispense favours and patronage.

Alf is comforted no longer. We are giving these plums – the spoils of victory – to our bloody opponents.

The idea used to be that the jobs were dished out to long-serving, and maybe not-so-long-serving, members of the party in Government.

That was the point of winning an election. You got to run the bloody country – dig up the conservation estate, run down the public service, turn Auckland into a Super City then govern it from Wellington, think about taking travel privileges off the oldies but back off when they squawk loudly, and so on.