It’s so hard not to talk about the Bridges-Ross saga, yesterday I said I felt sorry for Simon Bridges, today, I still feel sorry for him, but mainly because he’s been shown up to be a guy completely out of his depth, and surely anytime now, gone as the leader.

What’s important in life? Authenticity.

What did we get yesterday? What we got was, apart from another standout suit from Paula Bennett, (her suits are in serious danger of stealing the whole show), we got a side of Bridges we’ve never see or heard before.

A smug sounding sweary self-assured guy labouring a phone call he didn’t need to, as he got suckered into a pretty obvious recording.

It was like listening to an episode of Get Smart.

That phone call sounded more Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 than it did National politicians.

How many leaders would fall for that? I’m picking not many.

But as far as private phone calls go, I don’t expect any of us would sound the same on the phone to our mates or colleagues, as we do on a public platform, but there needs to be some bridge (excuse the pun) between the two.

What we got yesterday was a revelation, an unrecognizable Bridges.
The departure between public and private Bridges seems so great, he’s lost a key tenet of a public profile, to be authentic.

You can be a dick, you can be a bore, you can be naïve, as long as you’re authentic and true to yourself.
Simon now seems so publicly coached, so PR’d, that he’s lost the ability to be Simon.

Publicly, he’s been a robot.

His biggest growth in leadership has been the past 24 hours, I’ll give him that. In that respect, Ross has done him a favour, but at the same time, Ross has sealed Bridges' fate.

Not with the tape, the tape exonerates him, and on that score, I think he’ll fare OK.

Apart from the casual racism, the potential purchasing of candidates, the desire to cull candidates, arrange some based on race, and calling one of his MP's “f***ing useless”.

That insight into his character is potentially the undoing of him.

That and the next chapter of this sorry saga, yes there’s more, another tape is apparently on the cards ... let’s see what else is coming.

Because to my mind, if it’s not this week, it is inevitable that well before the next election, we’ll be saying bye bye to Bridges.