Vance on Williams and Jackson
Andrea Vance writes:
Labour should be championing MPs like Poto Williams. Brave, willing to speak their mind and stand up for the vulnerable.
Instead, Andrew Little’s office appear to have humiliated her by making her publicly back down. …
The handling of this little skirmish was cloddish. Firstly, Little misled journalists on Thursday by claiming Jackson hadn’t made up his mind and this was all a rumour started by the Maori party.
Behind the scenes, Labour MPs and members were seething with rage – both over the unfair leap-frogging and the casual abandonment of the party’s gender quota. The obfuscation further enraged them.
Right from the beginning, Andrew Little should have brushed off the Williams-Jackson spat. Labour is a broad church, after all. And outside of the Beltway, no one was paying that much attention.
The over-sensitive reaction has blown the story out of all proportion – and into the news bulletins for another day.
But worst of all, Labour is now the party that gagged one of its promising female MPs to spare the pride of a man who victim-shamed a teenager, live on air.
But it seems that’s ok, because some commentators judge he has the ‘common-touch’ with voters.
And we thought “I’m sorry for being a man” was a low point.
Never ever assume Labour has reached a low point. They always have the capacity to get lower.