The latest round of Sharma disclosures are, sorry to say, "politics as usual" on pretty much all fronts.
It doesn't look good. And that's why it's specifically supposed to not happen where anyone outside of politics can see it.
There is nothing especially unusual about MPs and Candidates being "coached" on how to keep information out of the public eye.
I also don't think there's anything particularly unusual about a party's internal disciplinary processes turning out to be (or, at least, being presented as seeming to be) conducted on something decidedly lesser than a "Blind Justice" (or, for that matter, 'Natural Justice') basis - and instead being a strategic exercise first and foremost.
But then - I'm rather biased on that front.
Now I am not, for a moment, seeking to suggest that this kind of thing is 'just how it is' and shouldn't be challenged nor criticized.
On the contrary. As a point of general (and genuine) principle - a certain distaste for top-down and seemingly cabalist party management was partially how we wound up with MMP.
Because people decided - by and large - that they'd finally had enough of Government by fish-and-chip club. If only because said small coteries with control appeared to have a rather nasty habit of springing unpopular and unwelcome initiatives upon an unsuspecting body-politic in a fashion that, with deference to the circumstances of Ruthanasia relative to National's 1990 Election Campaign, say, appeared to have more than a 'hint' of "predetermination" there to them.
Lest I be misconstrued upon this point - I am absolutely NOT seeking to suggest that the Parliamentary Labour Party purportedly convening a pseudo-'Star Chamber' meeting the night before a disciplinary proceeding for a 'rogue MP' ... is somehow tantamount to a re-run of the Neoliberal vandalism efforts of the 1980s and 90s.
As I think I may have intimated above - all of this that's currently happening is just "business as usual". There's nothing out of the ordinary here. The only "crime" one could feasibly make out is that it's been done in such a fashion that various details and various elements to it are being conducted in something closer to public view than usual.
And this is absolutely, most definitely NOT a "Labour issue". It's not even a "National" issue or a "Party of Governance" issue. It is - put quite simply - a Politics and Political Party issue. I can start going through and citing examples running right the way back to Ancient Athens and Republic-era Rome to further furnish the point there if it is absolutely necessary.
Some parties, to be sure, are almost certainly markedly less prone to this kind of shenaniganry ... and other parties are probably markedly less prone to getting 'caught out' in what can be made to look like an unfair gambit.
All in all, about the only thing I happen to think's a bit peculiar here is that Sharma has found himself in this state - on grounds that he's clearly a very bright guy.
Who must surely, surely have had at least some inkling as to the nature of the iniquitous blood team sport that he was about to get himself up and embroiled within when he signed up for candidacy however many moons ago now.
I'm not taking a position in who's right or wrong in all of this. I don't have the facts with which to do so.
It's even vaguely possible that neither (major) side is actually 'in the wrong', really - and that some nefarious third party (within the party) has been winding up Sharma with a view to 'setting him off' in order to accomplish some particular, pertinent aim. Stranger things have most certainly happened in party politics over and down through the years. Who knows.
Yet I can't help but feel that, whatever the ins and outs and rights and wrongs and timelines and white-board chicanery involved ... it's all a bit of a waste, really.
The only figures who'll come out of this ahead are the (metaphorical) vultures.
Or the Press Gallery.
2 days ago
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