A Brash Act

I was today going to forward the penultimate letter from George Bush to God; I also toyed with the idea of paying tribute to Hamilton in honour of its acquisition of the V8. But all was overtaken by yesterday’s announcement that Don Brash was resigning.

You have to feel sorry for media. Well, you don’t have to; I certainly don’t, and that is despite last week being accorded the honour of “best media personality” but I digress. You have to feel sorry for the media when they have a surfeit of stories. They have the stadium debate (which, have you noticed, if now described more accurately as the stadium debacle?) and they have the Brash resignation. Which to run with? Both. Which to give prominence to? That’s the question.

So, let’s talk League.

Tomorrow night the Kiwis will beat Australia to retain the Champion’s Trophy. No question, no qualification. Bluey has the boys believing in themselves and all the old hoodoo of forty minute football is a thing of the past There are also cracks showing in the previously formidable and impervious monolith that was the Australia league team. Their backs will sparkle but their forwards will have no answer for the battle up front and that’s where the game will be fought and, in the Aussies’ case, lost.

Brash is a good bloke. He was in his own arena the Beckham of banking. But politics is not a game of finesse such as soccer; it is simple and it is brutal. Like League. Brash was never going to make it playing that game, not against Cullen and Clark; he was outweighed, he was out-muscled, he was out-played and inevitably he was in the end out the door. But does that necessarily mean the other side won?

No, I think not. To carry the sporting analogy one final step: I think that in being instrumental in removing Brash the Labour Party may, just may, have scored an own goal. It won’t be so much in who replaces Brash—that won’t be the key—it will be that the present Labour front row of Clark, Cullen, Mallard et al will be seen finally for what they are: brutal, vindictive and vicious