No organised bile

Clark again tries to portray herself as the victim, and claim personal attacks are no part of Labour strategy. Her problem is that not only do her Ministers and MPs undertake them constantly, but one of her most senior colleagues explicitly said we will dish up dirt unless you lay off on the pledge card. It wasn’t implicit, it was explicit.

As the Dominion Post says today, “But the time for taking a stand was not yesterday or even last week. It was the day he and Mr Benson Pope first started flinging dirt. That would have sent a signal to her colleagues that there were lines they should not cross.”

And further at the very same time as she is condeming the rumours about her and her husband’s sexuality, her parliamentary colleagues are pushing to media rumours about a National MP’s sexuality – falsely claiming he has left his wife and children to move in with his gay lover. Yes seriously – Labour MPs are pushing that rumour. It is also false. And Labour MPs for over a decade have traded in speculation about the sexuality of various National MPs so again the PM’s new found standards are rather late.

And despite journalist after journalist having stated the Davis US rumours have not been pushed by National MPs, Clark continues to inists they were. Her proof – that Don Brash had lunch with Bridget Saunders, and Saunders then referred to them in a column. Good God guilt by association. Saunders has denied they discussed the rumour – in fact the lunch was to discuss global warming.

One area where I agree with clark is her description of the SST owing her an apology. They took the Investigate story (which in fact was almost a non-story) and made it their front page lead. Speculation is they thought the Investigate article was going to be much more significant than it really was, so they tried to scoop them. A big miscalculation.