Blue Blood

Beginning with the shock resignation of John Key, Blue Blood reveals the reasons behind one of the most dramatic falls in popularity in New Zealand’s political history and tells the full story of how the National Party went to war with itself.

Informed by campaign emails and internal party communications, and with commentary from key advisors, staffers, and past and current MPs, Andrea Vance sheds new light on the ministers and motivations that made headlines: negotiations with the kingmaker, high-profile resignations, secret recordings and text messages, allegations of bullying and harassment, and leaders gone rogue on the campaign trail.

Blue Blood takes the reader inside the rooms where fatal decisions were made, asks what values lie at the heart of a modern-day National Party, and questions who else might be waiting in the wings.

Author Biography

Andrea Vance is a senior journalist at Stuff. Born in Northern Ireland, she worked in the Press Gallery at the New Zealand Parliament for nearly a decade, first with Stuff and then TVNZ. She spent seven years as an investigative journalist with the News of the World and was night news editor at the Scotsman. She is a Press Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.