Armstrong and Brown on Glenn

Russell Brown’s blog on the Owen Glenn issue is pretty fair.  One conclusion:

The nub of the story is the interest free loan of $100,000 he revealed he had made to Labour after the last election. Actually, not even the loan: but the fact that Labour Party president Mike Williams did not mention it when questioned by reporters last month.

The fact that the part of the loan that could be considered a donation — the $7000 or so interest foregone — fell below the declaration threshold under the old electoral laws does not matter. Williams misled journalists, and that very rarely ends well.

John Armstrong counts the cost:

It is the interest-free loan that has turned out to be far from interest-free. Labour may have benefited financially from Owen Glenn’s generosity. But the party is sure as heck paying an exorbitant rate of interest in political terms.

Despite getting the $100,000 interest-free loan on top of $500,000 in donations from the expat businessman, Labour must have been asking itself in recent days whether its association with the billionaire philanthropist has been worth the hassle.

I said something similiar on radio yesterday -Glenn has gone from their saviour to a walking disaster zone for them.

The party will have been pondering that question even more intently following the drubbing it received at the hands of National in Parliament yesterday.

The trouncing was almost complete before Justice Minister Annette King described Bill English as “Mr Nasty”. But that sealed victory for the Opposition.

When a minister as experienced and normally dominant on the parliamentary stage as King resorts to name-calling to avoid answering a question from an opponent, that is as close to an admission of defeat as you are going to get.

Indeed.  And I still maintain the Speaker should not have allowed that as an acceptable response.