I've just read a piece by Michael Laws on the internal argument of the ACT party (you can read the opinion piece here). On a side note, while I find it rather amusing the irony of Laws using the analogy of a disintegrating marriage to prove his point given all that he's been through recently, I find his conclusions rather shortsighted.
As he points out, short of a stint in prison you can't really rule out anyone out of power. I fail to see how, a year out from the general election, he can announce the ACT party dead in the water, and the National party in danger of flailing in the same pond.
The advantage of MMP is that your party doesn't have to rely solely on electorate seats. Rewrite your member list before the election and you can ensure that those who created the problem in this term don't even have to feature in the next - a tool that both National and Labour have used to their advantage in the past. Hyde could theoretically continue to hold on to his Epsom seat (which I'm not arguing is guaranteed) by clever campaigning, or failing that ACT could put up another worthy candidate in another electorate, the ACT party could come back in the next election with an entirely different set of MPs.
Failing that, National may not even necessarily need ACT come 2011. Many of the political polls aren't too short from having National gaining over a 50% share of seats. Even slightly short they can always rely on Dunne to back them up. And, should ACT fail to gain the support required to get into power, the conservative vote will have to go somewhere - ACT not being in the picture might actually work to National's advantage.
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