Everyone interviews the winners. I want to ask a former Prime Minister what it feels like the morning after you lose.
I have watched a lot of election night coverage now. Probably too much for someone who has to be up for school.
Here is what I noticed. The cameras are always on the winner. Confetti, a big speech, everybody shouting. And then there is one short clip of the person who lost, standing at a different podium in a different room, saying congratulations and thank you to the volunteers, and then they walk off and the coverage moves on.
Nobody ever follows them out.
So I have written to Chris Hipkins. He was Prime Minister, then he lost an election, and now he is Leader of the Opposition, which is a real job with a real title and a real salary and almost none of the power.
The questions I would ask:
What do you actually do on the Monday after? Do you go to work? Does someone tell you where to sit now?
Being Leader of the Opposition means your whole job is to argue with the government. How do you do that without becoming a person who just says no to everything?
Is there something the other side did that you thought was genuinely good, and were you allowed to say so out loud?
What would you tell an eleven-year-old who is scared of losing at things?
I think that last one is the real reason I wrote. Grown-ups in politics lose in public, in front of the entire country, on television, and then they get up on Monday and keep going. I lose at swimming sports in front of maybe forty people and I want to move to another town.
There is something to learn there and I would like to learn it from someone who has done it.
No reply yet. Offices are busy. I will report back either way.