The Conservative Party Are Lunatics

I'd previously thought that they couldn't get any wackier than that whole moonlanding-chemtrail fiasco.

But, as ever, the Conservative Party looks mad keen to prove me wrong and shove splinters 'neath their fingernails as they attempt to plumb the bottom of the barrel for political sanity.

For you see, it would appear they're attempting to roll their leader again.

Again? Yes, again. This isn't the first time Colin Craig has found his woolly-mittened grip on the paler-shade-of-blue kingdom under threat.

Way back in March, a similar debacle seemed imminent with "murmurings" about an attempted leadership coup then in circulation. It looks on the face of it like somebody approached Conservative Party candidate and Sensible Sentencing Trust honcho Garth McVicar to take over the leadership, had him pegged to turn up to a board meeting ... and then watched in abject horror as McVicar chickened out at the last minute.

I suspect that the reasoning for this abjectly inexplicable decision (and the subsequent attempt to desperately breathe life into the coup attempt by leaking news of it out into the media) probably had something to do with the rumours then swirling about some decidedly un-conservative conduct by Mr Craig which had induced his long-suffering press secretary - one Rachel MacGregor - to resign highly publicly two days before the last Election.

Due to Craig's well-known penchant for defamation suits, and the fact that I am an impecunious quasi-journalist ... I have no desire to tempt fate nor finances by committing to print the precise nature of the rumours in question.

But the cynical reader is welcome to draw their own conclusions about why she referred to her erstwhile employer as a "manipulative man"; what caused her to take such umbrage against him as to stage her resignation so publicly and timed in such a way to do maximum electoral damage to his campaign; and why Craig subsequently refused to release her statement of resignation to clarify matters. It was a sorry affair, indeed.

Now even given Mr Craig's tarnished reputation amidst the desertion of one of his key staff and the resignation of two of his star candidates from the Party, a moment's consideration would appear to suggest that rolling your Most-Recognizable-Face-Cum-Main-Source-Of-Financing is *not* perhaps the greatest stroke of political genius since #DirtyPolitics.

But, then, nobody ever said one of the prime requisites for Conservative Party membership was brainpower or a keen sense of wisdom and political nous.

I was therefore rather less surprised than I perhaps should have been at last night's news that the Conservative Party's board was, once again, apparently considering rolling their leader in favour of someone Garth McVicar.

The lifeblood of any party outside of Parliament is media-oxygen, and on the face of it Craig's agreeing to be interviewed by TV3's David Farrier in a somewhat attention-grabbing context represented exactly that.

It's slightly quirky, yes - and I doubt that you could ever really call anything Craig does "dignified" ... but it's vitally needed attention and public salience which - along with Craig's millions - is the only thing seriously keeping the party alive.

I therefore find it slightly odd that he's being pilloried for it.

Unless, of course, what's actually happening here is the Conservative Party's more *ahem* "conservative" members are really just freaking out about their "core values" being undermined thanks to their leader sharing a sauna with a man whose sexual preferences include other men.......