Is this the week the tide turned for the Labour Party and their chances of Government slipped away? 

It's indisputably true to say it hasn’t been their week, or even a good week. 

Some of the stuff that’s been bubbling for a while came to a, sort-of, head. 

The lack of policy, the waiting for this magical PREFU, which allegedly contains Lord-knows-what by way of fiscal revelation, that will somehow make billions upon billions of dollars in promises make some sort of sense. 

Are people who could vote Labour tired of waiting? Uninspired by the lack of vigour? Or just realising that the economy is coming back and the recovery is real, so some of the angst that drove them away from the Government is now melting? 

Are Labour not radical enough, so the Greens get a look in? 

Are people scared of the Greens and even more scared of the Māori Party, so the realisation has dawned on them that Labour can't do deals with mad people, so maybe the Government aren't that bad after all? 

Does the first meeting of the campaign for their leader, which involved 100 people and a cat, display the lack of enthusiasm, not just from Labour, but from their supporters who are channelling the lacklustre approach of their party? 

It's important to remember that of all the polling so far this year, the vast majority have never actually had Labour winning the election. But it did have them in front of National, which has given the media enough to feed on. 

But even that, in the past two polls, has slipped away and what was once the 'Luxon nightmare' is now the 'Hipkins drama'. "Is he the right guy?" 

Or is the ghost of 2023 back? As more people focus on their vote and what's happening around them, do the memories of the lockdowns, the fiscal failures, the kids not at school and the crime waves remind them that Hipkins, Sepuloni, Jan Tinetti, Ayesha Verral, et al are the same people? They haven't changed and the party hasn’t changed. 

Do the memories of the endless working groups come flooding back? And does the laziness of that period look a lot like the laziness of this period of minimal policy, of lack of vigour, of a lackadaisical Government bagging sound bite obsession? Does it remind us these guys work office hours and are out of original thought? 

It ain't over. But man, they look flat. 

And Hipkins looks flatter than most.