I’m going to come to the defence of Phil Twyford.

There’s been a lot of speculation about whether he’ll lose his job or be demoted in the upcoming cabinet reshuffle. I actually think that’s incredibly unfair on Twyford.

This policy, as rubbish as it is, actually predates Twyford. It was dreamt up by Annette King, who was Housing spokesperson in 2012 when she hatched the idea. Or, not so much hatched it as took it from the Salvation Army after one conversation with them in the back of a car.

Back then, David Shearer was the leader. It was King and Shearer who came up with the ridiculous and impossible idea of building 100,000 houses in 10 years. They’d originally settled on 50,000 houses, but thought they could crank that up, and even considered going higher than 100,000.

So this wasn’t Twyford’s idea. He just got handed the thing and now has to run it.

Now, you can criticise him for maybe not watering it down. Or maybe for not saying this is crazy. Maybe not having a good enough idea of how to implement it. Maybe not foreseeing, with all those years in opposition, that there wouldn’t be the buyers who could afford it. Maybe not foreseeing that you shouldn’t put Kiwibuild houses in Christchurch where there is an oversupply of houses already.

You might be able to criticise him for that, but that’s stuff on the fringe.

This was a major Labour party policy at two elections. It was a huge promise that they keep on repeating. He was the guy asked to do the best he could with that. He was effectively given a helicopter and told to fly to the moon.

How could he make that work? It was always impossible.

So he doesn’t deserve demotion actually. This is on the whole Labour Party. Leaders from Shearer through to Ardern, housing spokespeople from King to Twyford, they all got it wrong. They were starry-eyed and naïve.

The team has to take this one, not just Phil Twyford. And as the PM says, one individual shouldn’t be blamed for what was an ambitious policy. And by ambitious, I mean ridiculous.