In an editorial on Stuff over the weekend which Cam has already summed up from one perspective, Ms Wilson has delivered a glowing expose of her own gushing egoism. She’s right about one thing – National does need some change and good on Judith Collins for starting the much-needed cleanout – it’s not before time.
While everybody is entitled to an opinion, one might expect someone claiming years of experience in journalism and politics might deliver opinions that are worthy of that experience.
The assertion in the first two paragraphs is that the National Party is insane and “central to that madness is Judith Collins”. While that might make the left spin their wheels, a reader of moderate intelligence might wonder what has brought on such a toxic attack.
A very wise person once said: It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. The quote (or similar) has been attributed to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Confucius, John Maynard Keynes, the Bible and probably dozens of others over time.
Oblivious to the reality of that quote, Wilson goes on to “inform” us that Judith Collins
“this week continued her Muldoonist strategy of getting rid of MPs deemed not loyal to her. Driven in equal measure by her need for utter loyalty and its ugly stepsister, paranoia, Collins demanded former leader Todd Muller’s head, after it emerged that he had been an anonymous source in an article that criticised Harete Hipango’s return to parliament.”
I wouldn’t want to leap to any conclusions here and I’m only guessing, but it seems that Ms Wilson views it as perfectly permissible for a senior MP, a former leader, no less, to leak information about colleagues. She further asserts that it is paranoid and somehow unreasonable for the leader to expect loyalty from members of the team. Evidently getting rid of team members who are not loyal is a “Muldoonist strategy” which Ms Collins has apparently been continuing.
I don’t think it needs to be said, does it, that any team leader in any environment, be it business, sport or politics, should reasonably expect their team to be loyal and should always reserve the right to ask them to work or play elsewhere if they’re not prepared to fit in? The old FIFO philosophy?
But isn’t it interesting how toxic the arrangement and inclusion of a few words can make a simple statement appear.
To be fair to Ms Wilson, she did admit openly (albeit well into the article and under pain of it being a “suicide mission”) that she was the National Party’s Chief Press Secretary during Muller’s leadership and went on to assert that
“It turned into four-and-a-half months of turmoil that started with one leader and ended with another, and included the leaking of Covid-19 patient details and a fantasist’s tawdry sex scandal for good measure.”
Arguably the most accurate part of her entire article. It is in fact a very accurate summation of Muller’s time as leader and it could very easily be argued that had he been half competent and been advised by people who were half-competent, much of the turmoil to which she refers would not have arisen. Had Muller stepped up and led from the front, neither the Covid patient’s details nor the sex scandal would have surfaced. But he was too busy apologising for having a MAGA hat in his office.
The article confirms in part why Muller was unsuccessful as leader. His own press statement regarding his resignation conclusively confirms the others. Celebrating being able to close a deal with James Shaw on climate change shows how far out of touch he remains with the real hard-working people of New Zealand. (Please note – it’s New Zealand to those people) and that says it all. That is not where National needs to be.
