A beltway beltway issue

Stuff reports:

Labour is calling for John Key to sack Simon Bridges as a Cabinet minister, after emails emerged showing officials gave him advice days ahead of the Northland one-lane bridge announcement. …

Labour leader Andrew Little said Bridges should be sacked not only as Transport Minister, but should lose all of his ministerial warrants, because of the emails. …

Little said that if he were prime minister and a minister acted in that way, he would have their warrants stripped.

“To get advantage for the purposes of an election, that’s a gross breach.

Generally Labour have been acting more intelligently and focused since the election, but this shows they’ve still got some way to go.

Crying wah wah wah because a Minister may have acted in a political way, and even more ridiculously claiming that this means they should be stripped of all their warrants is hilarious. And I suspect Andrew Little will regret his statement that he would sack a Minister in Government for the same.

I don’t believe that anything Simon Bridges did, is a breach of the Cabinet Manual. But regardless this is what you call a classic beltway issue. The number of people who get excited over this is miniscule. Mrs Jones in New Plymouth and Mr Smith in Hamilton want jobs, incomes, decent schools, good healthcare etc.

The sort of people who think this is great politics are the same sort who orgasm over who won question time in the House. I know, because I used to be one of them. One of the good things about leaving Parliament is you get a much better idea of what really matters to New Zealanders.