I get the feeling that the National Party caucus is not a happy place right now. Having been denied their rightful place as rulers of the country evidence of disunity has been emerging. First there was the hatchet job on Bill English which totally undermined the effect of his state of the nation speech a couple of weeks ago. And the weekend’s news about Chris Bishop’s use of snapchat with teenage girls appears to me to have come from within the party.
I should emphasise that there is no evidence of any inappropriate behaviour by Bishop. My first reaction when I read the news was good on him for trying to engage young people in politics and his description of what happened seemed perfectly reasonable. His using snapchat was not advisable however and it is interesting that New Zealand political twitterati initially divided on gender grounds with most men initially thinking there was nothing untoward and most women thinking it was rather creepy.
His voluntary decision to change his snapchat habit was the correct one although it appears the decision was made after the complaints were lodged.
But one aspect of this story deserves further analysis. Who leaked the content to the media and why?
I went to that source of all things right wing Kiwiblog to have a look. Farrar’s post on the subject Anonymous Innuendo has a clearly disapproving tone.
He says this:
It is interesting that this is all about events of many months ago. And it hits the media now. You wonder about the political motivation of those involved and are either of the two parents members of a political party? If so, this is information that is relevant and should have been published.
I am not sure how to treat this comment. If either of the parents were members of a left wing party you would think that the information would have been made public immediately. Remember the incidents happened before the election and Bishop was in a really tight race for the Hutt South seat. And one of the parents approached Paul Goldsmith with the complaint which suggests it is more likely that at least one of the parents has National Party links.
Matthew Hooton commented and said this:
I guess the problem with Snapchat is the lack of a record. But I have no doubt the exchanges were as anodyne as when MPs usually communicate with school kids who contact them. This is a hit job, presumably by people associated with Bill English against one of the new MPs seeking generational change.
His comment attracted a lot of derision. Many Kiwiblog commenters thought this was a hit job by Labour. Their theory is that having received the information during an election campaign Labour decided to sit on it and wait until after they became Government (which was looking really unlikely) so they could use the information to divert attention away from their policy of doing away with charter schools. Go figure. This is Fox News quality insanity.
And over at Whaleoil nothing. Incessant anti union anti Labour rants, cute videos and a few pictures. But nothing about the story du jour. And the last comment made about Bishop was to deride him for teaming up with Team English during the attempted coup in 2016. Clearly Cameron has no time for Bishop.
The National Party caucus is not a happy place right now. Long may this continue.
When commenting please avoid suggestions that Chris Bishop’s actions are anything other than how he has described them. There is absolutely no evidence that he has done anything but what he says he has done.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress