Clark out but why just now?

The most incredible thing about the sorry tale of David Clark is just how the man in charge of health in a country that has basically defeated the biggest pandemic in a century messed up so badly that he lost his job.

Looked at from that point of view, it is quite an achievement.

There is, of course, the obvious: Ever since Stuff political reporters Thomas Manch and Henry Cooke broke the story of Clark mountainbiking during lockdown, after which he admitted he took his family to the beach while the rest of New Zealand was stuck at home, he has been a political dead man walking. He tendered his resignation then, and it was not accepted.

The surprise is not that he is gone but that he is gone now.

Clark has had plenty of time to resign since the end of the level 4 lockdown but only told Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of his decision on Wednesday, and tendered his resignation yesterday. At the same time, the prime minister has had plenty of opportunities to sack him.

The only obvious reason she didn’t was that she wanted him to go but didn’t want to actually sack him. The pressure on him over his sheeting home the blame for some of the recent border troubles to directorgeneral of health and public hero Ashley Bloomfield finally took its toll. Clark had become a lightning rod for much of the dissatisfaction with the Government’s border control regime.

His resignation brings to a close an unremarkable stint.

Arguably his biggest achievement was managing to wring money out of the minister of finance and pump it into the health system. But whether that money – particularly in mental health – will actually lead to better health outcomes for New Zealanders is a vastly different question. To the extent that it will, he has been a success.

Clark’s other big problem, in the health portfolio at least, was that he was neither a great operational minister nor blessed with an abundance of political acumen. Indeed, he had already been effectively sidelined by the time the Government took the country into level 4.

A global pandemic should have been the moment for any young thrusting health minister to make their career, stamp their authority on the ministry and convince the public they were in charge.

Instead, from the beginning Clark, ever the former Treasury technocrat and genuinely nice guy, deferred to Bloomfield and leaned heavily on expert health advice. There is nothing wrong with that, of course.

But he didn’t seem to understand that a key part of being a health minister during a pandemic was taking political responsibility for the response, and that it could be a springboard for greater things.

Instead, he was indecisive, deferring, and – much more legitimately at the time – trying to avoid widespread panic. In late January at the Labour Party retreat in Wairarapa, he was using the language of ‘‘alert, not alarmed’’. Within two months, the country was locked down. He was not in the prime minister and finance minister’s bubble. Ashley Bloomfield was.

For Labour, Clark’s departure was also about cauterising the seeping political sore that has been the border management over the past couple of weeks.

Labour knows that, having bet the house on eliminating Covid, if the virus comes back before the election all bets are off and the public’s massive support of the ‘‘sacrifice’’ of the ‘‘team of 5 million’’ could quickly slip away.

Ardern did not rule out Clark returning to the Cabinet in some role after the election. An economic role such as associate finance, revenue, commerce or something similar would utilise his skills.

But for now, he will be remembered as the bloke who broke his own Government’s lockdown rules and then publicly threw his own director-general under the bus.