A forced resignation is not a sacking

Newsflash for the Standard: no one cares and it's not important. Only the Labour partisans are prepared to rummage through these bins.

One of the party's main faults is its chronic dirt-mongering. Much was made of their President's trip to Melbourne to uncover John Key's dastardly past during the election campaign - just another rung down a very long ladder on which the party is sliding. Their antics, tactics and obsessions mirror some of their own critics, eg. Whale Oil, more than they can ever comprehend in their Fraser House/Parliamentary bubble. Why there can be so many comments on something so insubstantial and trivial tells a sad story of its own.

The pattern of behaviour in Labour is so well entrenched that they see nothing wrong with it at all. It's a massive turn-off, but they will never see it that way because - unfortunately for them and politics in general - Labour believes these supposedly sordid scandals can win them an election. It hasn't and it can't. They will never learn this lesson.

Along the way the facts of the allegation, the truth of which Labour is supposedly trying to reach on behalf of the public, becomes as abused in their hands as anything that National has supposedly done. A prime example is this case of Richard Worth's resignation.The premise on which this whole supposed issue is based - that Key fired Worth - is incorrect. Worth resigned - he was not fired. Both Key and Worth have said this officially. Other Ministers, like Prebble, have been fired - dismissed by the PM - but Worth's case is not in this category. Whether Worth was effectively forced to resign, or felt he had no option left to him but to resign, is different from being fired. This is important in this long, drawn out discussion supposedly about ministerial competence and public interest; but really about pathetic point scoring by a desperate Opposition without momentum.

Now, although it amounts to the same thing in many people's minds, it is a crucial difference upon which the entire, tiresome... entiresome... allegation of the Labour partisans hangs. And that so-called "sacking" did not happen. "Eddie" uses the terms "hypocrite – impulsive, expedient, unfair, and slippery." in his characterisation of Key, as well as:

"Key’s claim it wasn’t in the public interest to reveal the reason was just another of his lies."

Whose the hypocritical, impulsive, expedient, unfair, slippery liar here? It's not John Key - he said Worth resigned and Worth said that he resigned. That's the end of the matter, not the start of it. The question of whether a dismissal of a Minister must be explained by the PM is a moot point, but is irrelevant here. If a Minister resigns, as in this case, there is no need for the PM to explain the reason - that's up to the ex-Minister, not the PM.

With Labour's nose so firmly buried into the depths of the Tory's no doubt bottomless (in both senses of the word) panty drawer they miss the rest of the scene. For example Worth's vanity in ascribing himself a seat at the Cabinet table when he stated in his press release that he was a Cabinet Minister - a lie repeated commonly on TV news without a second's thought. He was never in Cabinet and the fact he issued his own statement that told that lie does speak to the personality of the man: a pompous (and if you'll excuse the expression in the context of the smutty and lurid allegations) a blow-hard. Under-achieving MPs like Kate Wilkinson and Pansy Wong were put in Cabinet to keep the politically and socially disabled Worth, Carter and Williamson outside of Cabinet. Worth's attempt at rehabilitation - by promoting himself to Cabinet in his farewell missive - has gone undetected.

If the Standardistas want to draw some Tory blood and call them liars they have to base their accusations on provable facts and not salacious speculation and untruths. If they fuck the prosecution up they can do as much damage to themselves as to National. That's a lesson they have a slightly better chance of learning.