So Mallard the Muss and Pete the Meat have been assigned to put the hit on Bill English.
Mr Mallard blogged this week on Labour’s Red Alert site that: “This story will last as long as English is a minister”, but he said the aim was not to get him to resign. “Actually we would prefer him to stay there.”
They believe Cabinet colleague Steven Joyce would do a better job for National, so politically Labour would prefer to see Mr English stay.
So, Labour’s heavies have played the Ultimate C*** play, nailing Mr 20.93% with the classic “we don’t want this useless bastard to go as we know he will make mistakes in the future”.
This is a very cynical play, but deserves proper respect because it is an all time great for an opposition party to use. It works on so many levels. Mainly they know full well that your opponent won’t be sacked or resign, and they want to make him look weak. It undermines his authority, and the nominated replacement then starts getting asked questions about succession, making the story go on and on and on.
Of course the correct response to the Ultimate C*** play is to play the man back, and preferably with a very nasty kick to the head or in Trevs case, the groin. Off the record a ‘senior national party insider’ says something like “Trev should get his own house in order or some nasty stories might break about his personal life in the right wing blogsphere and we don’t want him hitting Tau again and Pete needs to go back down to his communist mates in Dunedin and calm down as he looks like he is going to pop a vein”.
What I find particularly cynical, and certainly as morally questionable as anything Trevor is accusing Bill of, is that he, as the member for Hutt South, resident in Wainuiomata, has had himself appointed by the Labour caucus as the party’s shadow member for Taupo (or some such flimsy façade role), so that Trevor can fly from Wellington to Taupo and back every weekend, and often during the week too, so that he can visit his girlfriend, who lives there. He has no legitimate party business in Taupo. It’s a sham set up so he can fleece the taxpayer in the process of getting his end away.
My spies tell me that it is highly amusing watching Louise Upston, the legitimate member for Taupo and Trevor arrive together on almost every flight the two MPs take between the two centres. The man’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.
If he and Pete Hodgson want details of private arrangements made public then this blogger also calls for Trevor Mallard’s private arrangements to be made public. Labour should immediately authorise the release of Trevor Mallard’s travel arrangements since the election and also explain why Trevor Mallard, a resident of Wainuiomata is the buddy MP of Taupo when the ex-MP for Rotorua, Steve Chadwick, would have been the most logical and closest Labour loser to assign to the role.
If only the Parliamentary Service was open to the OIA process to find out just how many times since the election Mr Mallard has flown between Wellington and Taupo.
