So we now see in the battle of cock ups that poor old Labour has been completely outplayed.

National have a mess, they hire a QC, and announce the inquiry. Job done.

Labour gaslight the bejesus out of the troublemaker, say they are having a meeting, hold a secret meeting the night before, deny the secret meeting, until the secret meeting has a photo taken and then "accidentally" sent to Gaurav Sharma as proof, at which point they have to confess there was a meeting, and it just happens Sharma was the only one not there.

And as for the “accidentally" released photo.

A screenshot is an accident, forwarding it to the bloke you are about to knife isn't an accident, it's deliberate. It's called a leak.

Which means the caucus isn't as tight as the Prime Minister would have us believe. In fact, very little these days is the way the Prime Minister would have us believe.

In the grand scheme of things, they are the big losers here. Sharma, on balance, looks like the more innocent party and suspending him achieves nothing.

Suspending people is sensible if the person has made a mistake and wants to repent. I don't think Sharma wants to repent. Does he sound like a bloke who wants to repent?

This is bad enough, but it's made worse by the exposure of the Labour Party who made so much of the honest, transparent, and kindness nonsense that has blown up so badly in their faces.

They are Machiavellian, fundamentally dishonest, and about as shallow as a puddle.

The polls show it, led by their leader now at record lows in personal popularity.

All parties have trouble and a party with a large caucus was always going to have some kind of trouble, if not several episodes of trouble, in this three-year term.

But like all the other stuff they’ve cocked up from the economy, to Three Waters, to co-governance, the list is now bordering on endless, they have taken a rogue MP and made it a mile worse than it ever had to be, by yet again not understanding that honesty counts and transparency works. 

Pretending you are something you are not will always get exposed.