Winston Churchill once said that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”

We also know that democracy is a tender plant, that is constantly assailed by those – usually the rich and powerful – who find it irksome to suffer the limitations it places on them. It needs to be defended robustly if it is to continue to protect our liberties.

A democracy that is not defended by the people it serves will quickly wither and die. Those who have found themselves in a society that is not protected by democracy – and by its soul mate, the rule of law – have quickly discovered how tough life can be under a regime without either of those safeguards.

A democracy will continue to flourish only if the people defend it. If the will to do so weakens, the long dark night of totalitarianism beckons.

A society in which an extremist minority conduct themselves without regard for the law or for the wellbeing of their fellow-citizens and whose explicit goal it is to “get rid of the government” must be regarded as under serious threat – and the challenge to it must be regarded as nothing less than an attempted insurrection.

That threat must be met and averted by the combined will and determination the people as a whole. If they cannot summon up that will and determination, democracy is finished – and power will be seized by those with the loudest mouths and the most selfish and self-regarding motives.

All of this makes even more extraordinary the fact that a number of highly placed and well-regarded New Zealanders have expressed their support for the so-called “protesters” on Parliament’s grounds.

Such people seem to have allowed their political opposition to our elected government and desire to “get rid” of it – and their loss of confidence in their ability to vote it out of office – to take over what we might have hoped was their common sense and understanding of the value of democracy.

Those who sup with the devil must have a long spoon. By the time these misguided revolutionaries wake up to their mistake, it will be too late. There would be few freedoms – and certainly no ability to protest – under a non-democratic regime.

If the response of the authorities to the protest on Parliament’s grounds is to be appropriate and effective, it is important that we understand who these people are and what it is that they want.

There are, of course, some of them who are committed to a wide range of different and particular causes, and some who are just broadly hostile to the present government, but for the majority, the goal is simply to be there. That is because they are people who are accustomed to being ignored and overlooked. The prize they seek – and are delighted to have secured – is to be taken notice of, to be at the centre of events, to be the cynosure of all eyes. If they agree to move away, they will have to give up these gains.

If just being there is the goal, the rest follows. It becomes a great adventure, a chance for a holiday (of a kind), and to enjoy – as they look overseas to North America and other areas – the sense that they are part of a great international movement. Above all, it gives them – the usually powerless – the thrilling sense that, at last, they count for something.

If this analysis is correct, it provides some clues as to the proper and most effective response. The deployment of police to remove them simply adds to the sense of crisis and drama and confirms to them that they are doing something that matters.

It may be that the best tactic is simply to ignore them – to use the police only to prevent illegal behaviour, to protect the innocent (including the unfortunate children who find themselves involved) and to defend Parliament against invasion, but otherwise to leave them to feel the disapproval of most of their fellow-citizens, as they pursue their attempt to enjoy the mud and filth of the disease-ridden campsite they have created.

Congratulations are in order – not just for Jacinda and her government but for the average New Zealand voter as well. The last opinion poll shows that support for both the government and Jacinda has risen over recent weeks – and that suggests that voters have kept their wits about them, despite a sustained campaign by NZME and their outlets (principally the Herald, provincial newspapers and Newstalk ZB) to persuade them that the government’s handling of the pandemic has been nothing but a catalogue of errors and oversights.

For months now, the Herald has fed its readers a diet of criticism of everything the government has touched. Anyone with an opinion or a comment that shows the government in a bad light can be guaranteed unlimited column inches; on the other hand, the Herald has also repeatedly found space for its own items or interviews that show National party figures as supermen and women.

Fortunately for the health of our democracy, their readers seem to have been unconvinced by this extreme display of partisanship. They seem to have accepted that the government is having to work against unparalleled odds, and can claim a remarkable record of solid achievement, while the National party figures afforded so much time and space have done little more than posture and snipe.

Perhaps the most notable casualty of the latest poll is Act, and their leader, David Seymour, who seems to have paid the price for his disloyal bad-mouthing of New Zealand in an ill-judged article for the right-wing British rag, the Daily Mail.

Those of us who have feared for our democracy in the face of the Herald’s assault on it can, perhaps, now relax a little. The New Zealand voter is a solid citizen, made of sterner stuff than one might have feared. They have their own eyes and ears, and minds, to guide them through the trials and tribulations of recent times. They can work it out for themselves and are not easily misled by biased reporting. Well done, you!

The coronavirus has induced, I think, a kind of psychological confusion on the part of my fellow-citizens – they have conflated the virus and the government, with the result that they now see them as the same phenomenon.

The process works like this. The virus is so pervasive that its effects are felt in all sorts of unpredictable ways. The government, for its part, has undertaken to protect us by negating as many as possible of the manifold and sometimes unforeseeable problems caused to us by the virus. The result is that the adverse consequences felt by us are seen by many as the culmination of a causal process in which the government is directly involved, and unless the government has succeeded in negating the adverse consequence entirely, and – even more, if the government’s response itself brings some unwelcome consequences – some part of the injury or discomfort or displeasure experienced will be attributed to the government. The virus and the government are therefore seen as being a single phenomenon and indistinguishable from each other.

Paradoxically, the government would be seen more clearly as a separate factor if it had not tried to protect us in such an all-embracing way – if it had said “we are all victims, there is nothing to be done, and you’re on your own”. The confusion is of course increased if there are those sniping on the sidelines and pointing to every unwelcome aspect of the pandemic – that is, brought about by the virus – and saying, for political reasons, that it is all the government’s fault.

If we are to avoid this trap, we have to think straighter.

It is no accident that the guest speaker at the National party gathering in Queenstown this week is George Osborne, the former British Conservative MP and (now largely discredited) former Chancellor of the Exchequer in David Cameron’s government.

Kiwis may be surprised to learn of the keen interest shown by British Tories in the New Zealand political scene and, in particular, in the political fortunes of Jacinda Ardern. They are heartily sick of the favourable reports and coverage in the British media of our Prime Minister and of New Zealand in general.

What they fear is that, if the British voters get the impression that a party of the left has performed well as the government of another Commonwealth country, they might get the idea that a similar brand of politics might be a good thing in the UK as well. They are desperate to take the gloss off Jacinda Ardern.

That is why we have seen a couple of apparently unrelated episodes in the right-wing British media over recent days. There was the outrageous interview given by Philip Schofield (born in New Zealand and a recent visitor to our shores) to a right-wing television interviewer; in that interview, he asserted that New Zealand was “essentially closed”; his purpose was to assure viewers that any impression they might have that New Zealand had done, in comparative terms, pretty well in handling the coronavirus epidemic had to be offset by the draconian controls our government had put in place to defeat the virus.

But that was preceded (and exceeded) by an article written by David Seymour, our very own leader of the ACT party, for the right-wing Daily Mail newspaper, in which he described New Zealand as “a hermit kingdom” with an authoritarian government.

Most Kiwis would regard these opinions as not only wide of the mark but also as surprisingly disloyal – if not to the government (what else would you expect from those quarters) – then at least to the country.

It is not often that we can see so clearly how far the politically prejudiced can go to bad-mouth their own government and country. Sadly, we should be enured to any shock or surprise, when we see on a daily basis the lengths to which our own New Zealand Herald will go to skew the news against the government and in favour of National.