The political bloodletting is not over yet. There are plenty more empty pikes waiting for the heads that may need to be sacrificed in order to protect the prime minister. The buck should stop with her and as this scandal spirals out of control she should be sacrificed to stem the bleeding but without her, as the ‘kind’ face of Labour the party have no chance of winning at the next election and they know it.
Now we can only make the popcorn and wait to see how many more of the party members will be sacrificed in order to protect the Queen.
Labour will be hoping party president Nigel Haworth’s exit will cauterise the wounds.
It’s political management 101: feed the media a scalp and they will move on.
Haworth should have gone weeks ago, because he presided over two shocking episodes in which young volunteers have alleged sexual assault, and were badly failed by the party’s processes.
Instead he put his own career over those young people, by publicly contradicting their account of events. And, in the end, that’s what forced his exit.
By dragging things out he also put the PM at risk. Right now even loyal Labour followers are struggling to accept her claim that she didn’t know that the serious assault allegations were of a sexual nature.
Less than a year ago Jacinda Ardern declared at the UN that the #MeToo movement must become #WeToo. Now that claim is coming back to bite her as the Sex scandal has grown legs along with a new hashtag coined by one of our readers… #LabourToo
“We are all in this together,” was the message she took to New York, but it was not the words her young flock heard back in New Zealand when they reached out for help. They got brushed off with #SeeYou, not #WeToo. As the party’s figurehead, Ardern bears ultimate responsibility for their betrayed faith.
stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/115719872/labour-party-president-nigel-haworth-has-resigned–but-its-not-over
As the media frenzy continues Labour is starting to clam up.
Ardern would not say whether she had spoken to the three party investigators that had decided in July that no disciplinary action was needed against the Labour staffer.
She would also not be drawn on whether Finance Minister Grant Robertson had talked to her about sexual assault claims.
Robertson has also refused to say when he was told about sexual assault claims.
Complainants have claimed that Robertson was told about the claims on June 30.
Ardern would not say whether anyone else’s job was on the line, saying she would wait for the review of the process and the complaints from Maria Dew, QC.
She said the same thing when asked if she would ask for the party president Nigel Haworth’s resignation. Jacinda is not the type of leader who fires people or who even asks them to resign (at least not publicly). Instead, she says she is waiting for a QC or a working group or a report and then before that deadline is met the person of their own free will conveniently will push themselves in front of the nearest bus.
I expect there to be at least one more ‘voluntary’ resignation in the near future, assuming that the media keep doing their job and don’t ease off the pressure.
