Slip-ups and sweatshops - a winning week for Winnie

In politics it’s never the crime – it’s always the sloppy and poorly executed cover-up that gets them every time. And boy did we see that with the ‘‘Baby Barclay’’ pantsing this week. What a mess – and so woefully handled by a bumbling Bill English in his first true test of managing a scandal as prime minister.

Put on the spot, he failed. English blinked, gulped and gasped in the headlights. If smacked faces could shout out guilty then English’s dial had been on the receiving end of a furious Joseph Parker pre-fight warm-up.

The current PM is certainly no John Key when it comes to sprinting backwards, blindfolded, out of a raging inferno without getting so much as singed.

This scandal should matter and does matter. Todd Barclay, at worst, illegally taped a staff member, refused to co-operate with a police inquiry and sent it upstairs to then PM John Key, who agreed to a secret taxpayer payout in the form of hush money to make it all go away.

The truth is Barclay, Key and English all knew the facts and struck the secret deal to pull down the southern shutters on this sordid affair, hoping the dead bodies would be buried in a far flung corner of Southland, never to be seen or heard again.

That would allow Barclay to carry on as a new young MP with an exciting future.

No problems right? Dead (meat) wrong.

Hard to blame the young fella really, yes, he’s an arrogant little upstart with poor judgment, but his leaders hung on to him knowing all the facts and Key and English must take their share of responsibility for this week’s meltdown.

But – and here’s Parliament’s big but – when there’s an aggrieved party involved it’s stunningly arrogant and naive to think it will not be made public. It never stays secret forever. No wonder Key shot through and ran for the nearest (private) golf course. He must be chuckling from the 19th hole.

Like Houdini, he made a great escape from certain death which came in the form of something as simple as the truth.

What I learned in my time at Parliament was two things, sadly sceptical and breathlessly cynical, but this was my experience of a 17-year lag in the place.

1: The truth usually comes out, and 2; an MP’s default setting, when under pressure, is to lie.

I said that publicly in 2005 and then Prime Minister Helen Clark ripped me a new one but I knew I was largely right and she was just defending her patch.

But once again those two learnings have proved in huge supply this week.

Then National, just as they were sinking in their own slime, got thrown a red lifeline from their brain-dead attackers.

Labour’s hypocrisy

National’s get-out-of-jail card came in the form of a surprise visit from the truly incompetent Labour Party and their stunning double standards and sickening hypocrisy.

These so-called defenders of higher wages, better working conditions and cuts to the so-called fraud of international students coming into the country were found guilty of an old and common disease called; ‘‘egg on truly embarrassed red-face’’.

Can you actually believe Labour’s dirty little plan?

Labour imports 85 slaves in the form of foreign students, chucks them in a crummy marae with a broken shower and sub-standard dorms and hopes they’ll work for free on the election campaign with the distant hope of a lecture by Helen Clark about, (cue more hypocrisy) democratic and human rights.

Save me now from chucking inside a big paper bag. Do as I say not as I do, anyone?

If Labour’s union mates and funders weren’t so close to all this they’d be speaking out criticising it. But this is their club – they’ll stay silent like the poodles they are.

Labour should be embarrassed and like Barclay may yet face the law.

One winner

So there’s only winner here – the smiling travelling salesman, Winston Peters.

And because we all have dreadfully short memories, we’ve forgotten his selective amnesia over his party’s secret Spencer Trust and the number of times he’s been a total disaster and been sacked from government.

Argh, forget it, all is forgiven. Winston’s a winner this week. Because the two major parties looked like tired, lying, hopeless cover-up merchants and hypocrites.

And Winston flashed us all of his 36 perfect teeth and said, pick me.

And given the state of the two old parties, many more just might after National, then Labour’s absolute nightmare and meltdown on Molesworth St.

Bill English blinked, gulped and gasped in the headlights.