National leader John Key is New Zealand’s next prime minister after his party took 59 seats at today’s general election.

The New Zealand Herald

National’s strategy for the past seven years has been to present leaders with adjective surnames in a bid to win the support of the country’s most important swing demographic: newspaper headline-writers.

But where Bill English and Don Brash failed, John Key has succeeded. Asked by The Daily Grind how important his surname was to the result, Mr Key responded that it was “pivotal” and we replied “no, try again.”

However he feels about it, lame puns will be “key” to his administration.

The adjective strategy was devised after National lost office under adverb-based prime minister Jenny Shipley.

Mr Key becomes the first New Zealand prime minister with an adjective for a surname since Robert Stout left office in 1887. We don’t count Mike Moore (1990) because he spelt it wrong, and “more” is technically an adverb.

The four-week campaign was largely overshadowed by the final weeks of the presidential campaign in the United States. The final result in the New Zealand parliament is 59 seats for National, 43 for Labour and 20 for Barack Obama.

The National campaign was organised around the theme of “change”, inviting comparisons with the Obama campaign. Any such comparison is clearly spurious: against Mr Obama, Mr Key’s successful business career and six years in parliament make him far better qualified to be President of the United States.

Labour leader quits

Incumbent Prime Minister Helen Clark conceded defeat and indicated that she would be stepping down from the Labour leadership. Although New Zealanders weren’t ready for another three years with a woman in the nation’s highest office, Ms Clark told The Daily Grind, Labour voters did put “706,000 cracks in the glass ceiling.”

Support for the Labour-allied Greens party was well below what pollsters had predicted, leading the party’s supporters to suffer depression, paranoia, increased awareness of patterns and colours, impairment of motor skills, and increased appetite for corn chips and pizza.