In defence of Labour MPs

This may surprise some, but I don’t think people should rush to judgement over Kieran McAnulty and Anna Lorck.

It is clear that there has been a terrible breakdown between the Labour Party and Hamilton West MP Dr Gaurav Sharma. But we don’t know enough to judge who has been the major contributor to this. The job of a party whip is to enforce party discipline. It may be that Kieran McAnulty is a terrible bully, but it may also be that Dr Sharma is just pathologically unsuited to being a Member of Parliament for Labour.

What we can say is that the situation has been handled disastrously. To have this dispute go on for 18 months and end with an MP lodging newspaper columns against his own party, bringing lawyers to meetings and revealing he has felt suicidal is a terrible indictment on those who are meant to solve such issues.

There are some interesting aspects to the claims by Dr Sharma, which I will touch on.

• He claims the Relationship Manager assigned by the Parliamentary Service was conflicted as he was an active Labour Party member who opposed Dr Sharma’s selection. If this is correct, this is highly unusual. The employees of Parliamentary Service (as in core employees, not those working directly for MPs) should not be active party members. It would destroy trust.
• The accusation that a Labour MP and staffer misused taxpayers’ money needs some sort of specificity and then investigation
• There is an interesting constitutional issue about the involvement of a Whips Office in being able to veto an MP hiring staff. I understand the practical desirability of it, but should an Electorate MP be able to have the Whips dictate whether or not he can hire staff?

But again I would be careful about judging who is right between Sharma and McAnulty. There are aspects of what Dr Sharma says which make me cautious of taking his version of events as objective, rather than subjective. People who talk about hundreds of pages of dossiers tend to have lost perspective on an issue, in my experience.

This brings me to the second issue with Tukituki MP Anna Lorck. On the basis of what has been published, one can’t conclude that Anna Lorck is a bad boss. She may be the boss from hell, but you can’t conclude that on the basis she had a staffer move furniture around the office, do menial tasks and once sober drive her home.

I have observed many many MP-staff relationships. In the best ones, the staffers are absolutely dedicated to the MP, and that includes what you might call pastoral care – driving them about, making sure they get good family time etc etc. But equally the MP is massively appreciative of their staff, and care and look after them. This isn’t generally a job which is 9 to 5, and you switch off the moment you walk out the door.

I’ve seen staffers who are so dedicated to their MPs, that they even follow them from Government to Opposition, despite halving their pay.

Now not all MP-staff relationships are like the best ones (but it might surprise you how many are). Sometimes you do get MPs who are bullies, and sometimes you get staff who make mistakes that cause huge grief to their MPs.

And sometimes you may just get a situation where an MP thinks they have a good enough relationship with their staffer they don’t think it is a big issue to ask them to give them a lift home, but they have misjudged it and the staffer does feel it is an inappropriate imposition.

I don’t know which, if any, of the above applies to Anna Lorck and her (ex) staffer but I think we should be fair and not jump to conclusions. Likewise the same applies Kieran McAnulty. Accusation is not the same as proof. Just because they are MPs in a party whose policies I don’t support, means that they are necessarily in the wrong.