It’s hard work at the best of times for political parties to attract good candidates. But it’s doubly so for the two main parties, because all the smaller parties are so quick to secure the urine-drinking bank-robbing identity-thieves, leaving National and Labour only the boring and sensible candidates to choose from.

Apart from the woman-bothering expense-rorting ones, those who end up in Parliament for the Nats or Labour often lack colour, but that’s probably because they’re not drinking their own piss.

Forcing yourself to drink your own urine probably isn’t so different to being an ACT supporter. Imagine waking up every day in expectation of the latest PR catastrophe to hit the party. Why would you keep doing this unless you actually liked the taste? A lot of people pay good money for the chance to be brutally humiliated, so I would not be at all surprised if ACT harboured a disproportionately large number of S&M aficionados. And Black Caps fans.

You would have to enjoy punishment to hang in there after watching your entire party leadership be destroyed by an outsider, who then proceeds to play cynical politics by putting up in Epsom a moral conservative whose best days are long past and whose views on many topics are anathema to the libertarian wing of the party.

And it’s only getting worse for ACT. National’s colourless candidate for Epsom, Paul Goldsmith, has been almost begging people not to vote for him, and yet the latest opinion poll suggests he’ll win the electorate. Some people have speculated that the good folk of Epsom are planning to vote National because they have had enough of being insulted. But if that were the case why vote for the candidate who doesn’t want their vote? Why not vote for a candidate who actually wants to win and also doesn’t belong to a lunatic party?

That could be why Labour’s David Parker is closing in on Banks in the latest poll. Will he win? It’s unlikely, and if Epsom did turn red we would probably see a mass flight from the area, as people fled down Gillies Avenue towards the motorway in their late model European cars and SUVs, looking back nervously in case the Red Guards should be on their tail.

It’s not a done deal, however, and if National ends up needing a couple of ACT MPs to form a government then the voters of Epsom will probably give a tick to the ACT candidate.

In that case spare a thought for the NZ First candidate who has been booted from his party for enjoying a tangy cup of wee. Would consuming a glass of your own urine be any more distasteful than voting strategically for the Mad Party candidate?