(For a start he lied about He Puapua being unknown to him)

It used to be that this art was confined almost solely to used car salesman and politicians but our education and entertainment systems have now equipped even ordinary people with this “skill”.

It comes in many forms; re-defining words to mean something different is a favourite tactic, like the word “vaccine”. This is much easier than constructing Sir Humphrey-like word palaces.

But it has also involved simply pretending that you never said what you once did and incredibly this continues even in a world where the Internet is forever, especially for politicians like Winston Peters who, in a last-gasp-of-his-life effort to get back inside his favourite watering hole, Parliament, is now appealing to the people hurt and damaged by our extremist responses to General Tso’s Sickness.

But this has worked for him before. I wasn’t here in New Zealand in 1996 but the Internet existed sufficiently for me to stay abreast of that year’s election in New Zealand and so I was aware of NZ First’s success at getting both the Maori electorates and the Old White People vote, by lambasting the Bolger government as having allowed Rogernomics to continue and be embedded.

And then he went into coalition with that government, resulting in a huge drop in votes in 1999 and the permanent loss of the Maori seats, which scurried back to their other betrayers, the Labour Party.

After 2008 it seemed Winston was finished. Old, grumpy, and cleverly excluded from power in advance by John Key’s public refusal to go into coalition with him, thereby spiking his usual gun. There was also the stench of corruption around him that was stronger than ever.

But then in 2017 he came roaring back to life courtesy of “nice guy” Bill English not learning from Key, and a newish batch of Winston voters who this time believed that he’d provide “spine” to National – and of course he promptly stabbed them in the back by going with Jacinda, leading to the last six years of incompetence, waste, failure and division.

And now he’s found a new bunch of potential marks. It seems incredible given his track record and age, but Winston could be back again this year.

But only if people have no memory, and luckily for Winston he only needs 5% in a world where at least 50% of the population either cannot or do not wish to remember.

Of course both the ACT and National leaders could spike his guns again simply by issuing a mild apology about their 100% support of Labour’s Covid 19 responses. It likely would not be genuine but as long as it contained the words “sorry” or “apology” it could be padded with all the usual stuff about what they didn’t know, etc.

However, they apparently can’t bring themselves to do that, and the only other gun-spiking that can be done is the Key option of publicly saying they won’t go into government with him. So far only ACT has ruled that out.

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If you want to see more doublespeak in action then the Twitter account, Defiant L’s, is your primary source. Some recent examples

Of course that last is just the usual political betrayal, as has been practiced for hundreds, or even thousands of years.