Morgan suggests Annette King and Phil Goff should retire and speed up the regeneration of their party by encouraging new talent to stand as Labour candidates in their by-elections. And they should. But if you look at the party votes for Rongotai and Mt Roskill you can see why they might be reluctant. Although Goff and King both won the electorate votes by large margins, they both came awfully close to losing the party vote to National. In Rongotai the margin is only ~160 votes. It might even go blue on the specials. If either of Labour’s leaders retire in place of a new, less well-known candidate they risk losing these once safe seats to the National Party.