If you've ever wondered what's wrong with the Labour Party in this country, have a look at what's going on in Britain at the moment and think about the similarities.

The British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn finds out tomorrow whether he gets to keep his job. The view is that he will when the vote's counted, even though a vast majority of his MPs want him gone. They voted by an overwhelming 172-40 when they put Corbyn to the confidence test in June after the Brexit referendum.

And when he came to power in September last year he'd been nominated by just 35 of the Labour MPs and yet when it was put to the vote for the new leader Corbyn won by an incredible 59.5 percent on the first ballot.

Like here, it's not the MPs who decide who their leader will be though, it's the trade unions. And like Andrew Little, Jeremy Corbyn comes from a union background so his tenure with the powerful Labour union affiliates would appear to be safe.

But unlike our Labour leader, Corbyn is uncompromising on almost everything that his party's taken a stand on since he was elected more than 30 years ago. At least Little can see the fault in a lot of what Labour's done in the past even if his opposition has done him no favours in some quarters, like opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership and changing the flag, both issues that the party once held dear.

There's talk in the United Kingdom that Labour, with Corbyn at the helm, is looking at a long term in opposition, decades are being talked about in some quarters. And all this at a time when those who appeal to the disenfranchised are doing much better than anyone would have expected, like Donald Trump and like the slap in the face delivered by the electorate recently to Australia's Malcolm Turnbull.

In this country Labour's main saving grace is MMP where other parties could get it across the line, although it'd have to do better than its last opinion poll rating of 26 percent which Little said was bogus.

It's worth remembering in that context though where National was with Bill English at the helm during the 2002 election where he scraped together just over 20 percent of the vote. Three years later only the eleventh hour policy of interest free student loans got Helen Clark her third term in office.

And John Key's got the tax cut carrot up his sleeve in his bid for a fourth term which will be hard to counter, particularly if that old maxim is right: oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them.