What’s up with the man from Epsom?

The leader of the Act Party has been in plenty of headlines in the last two weeks, ranging from a controversial letter to police on behalf of constituent Philip Polkinghorne (written before David Seymour was a minister) to an attempt to drive a Land Rover up the steps of parliament. Remarkably, he had a pop at an “ill-advised” Christopher Luxon.

And that’s just scraping the surface; there are the questions around the response to Tim Jago, the teacher-only days, the school lunches. Across the board, he is steadfast in insisting he’s erred not even a skerrick. Is it an obduracy born of being a one-man band for so long, or is he going through a Prince Hal phase, getting some stuff out of his system before he becomes the king (or deputy prime minister, at least)?

In a new episode of Spinoff politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime, Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire thrash all that out. Plus: how much alarm are the latest cluster of opinion polls causing for National and Luxon? Does a cavalcade of health issues represent a serious political headache for the government? What should we make of the findings in the much-delayed Manurewa Marae data inquiry and are John Tamihere’s protests fair? And a word on the Cook Islands, Mark Brown and China.

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