Will anyone please enquire if Chauvel has been talking to the media recently. I just don’t think Mallard was the one to duck off and have a cosy with Garner. Mallard’s best game is survival of the fittest. No matter which side comes up trumps in the ongoing leadership battle, Mallard will have his arse patted and be handed a beer regardless. Everyones a winner with his canny survivalist instincts.
SilentT Gate must be based on fact. Someone talked or cast enough innuendo for Garner to draw conclusions. Mature journalists don’t make up stories from thin air and the story sounds very concrete.
Garner specifically mentions, “2 M.P’s”, then “sources”, then “sources close to Shearer”.
Whoever talked, it won’t be a younger MP (nothing to gain here) and it will be someone lippy with territory close to Wellington.
It has a pecularily female feel to it. Remember school or your early working years when someone decided “someone else” was on the outer; inevitably the group would all turn on that individual?)
I also suspect that Maori chicks aren’t afraid to move if they sense an advantage on putting the ball in play. No fear of being opinionated here. Perhaps a member of Cunliffe’s team had a wee word about what was going on in the rest of caucus.
The only other explanation is that Cunliffe was fomenting dissent while abroad to get the usual speculations underway. It’s a lot easier to evade the blunt media probing if you’re hanging out in a scottish castle buffing your media profile. Note the lack of anger around his trip overseas. No accusations of “troughing it”, anywhere in the media.
Welding Waitakere Man with Nick Clegg perhaps:?
Nick Clegg
David Cunliffe: He might have even more of a striking similarity to Clegg if he wasn’t a mouth breather.
 There is a schism in the Labour ranks. There always has been but ’twas workable under Helen Clark. Faction 1: The pro union types and environmentalists that hang owt w t’ good folks at The Standard.
Faction 2: Cunliffe and everyone else.
It is easy to get all stirred about left wing issues like the environment and poor treatment of the workers by the greedy rich. The hardcore left winging Faction 1 will inevitably cluster in greater numbers in houses of worship like the Labour strongholds.
This message doesn’t currently have that much truck with swing voters who inhabit the ground elections are fought on. This is why Cunliffe is a prospect and leadership speculation will continue.
