Glenn taking another turn

Clark deserves this

"She is very self-serving," he said.

"I wouldn't want her in the trenches next to me."

Asked if he would support Labour in future, he replied: "I am not exactly cheering for Labour now, not when they turn the dogs on you."

It's a wonder he didn't say something like this after the Business School opening.

And he is trying to head off the "it wasn't Winston on the phone defense" too

He introduced his executive secretary Laura Ede to say she will sign an affidavit saying she put in the cell phone call to New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

I just don't understand why Clark has not already pulled the plug on Peters but surely the time has come? Better late than never.

Did she act fast enough?

It's inexplicable to me that the announcement that Peters was to be stood down from his Ministerial responsibilities while the Serious Fraud Office investigates his party's finances was allowed to miss the early evening television news bulletins.

Perhaps though there is hope that this move will in itself be enough staunch the bleeding.

Against that however, is the very good hand that John Key has been dealt in this affair. I've never understood the attraction of John Key but in a series of media performances, presenting his increasingly definite stand on Peters, he has for the first time appeared Prime Ministerial. There's not a lot of appeal in giving "I know our policy but if I told you I would have to kill you"-type interviews. The Peters scandal has finally given him an issue on which he can appear decisive and show leadership. He's been very wise to remove the ifs and buts and ands from his stance, it should be a vote-winner.

The anti-Peters vote is very much larger than the pro-Peters vote. Key's next move should be to attempt to identify a vote for Labour as a vote for Peters.

The Labour leadership should be moving this weekend to head off such an attack.

Hostage to Fortune

If Clark pushes Emissions Trading through the House with Peters' votes using the figleaf of a Privileges Committee inquiry she creates two enormous hostages to fortune.

The historical view of her Government will be strongly coloured by the eventual seriousness of the charges against Peters and the outcome of the Privileges Committee and SFO inquiries. She will also need the ETS to be an enormous success. If there are too many unintended consequences she will stand accused of driving through the most thoroughgoing and radical economic reform since the first term of the Bolger government without proper care and due process. The more so if it emerges that Clark's support for Peters keeping his job has the explicit quid pro quo of Peters' support for the ETS.

Like Prime Minister Howard in Australia she could find her standing much diminished by failing to leave politics on her own terms and by seeming at the end more interested in retaining power than in exercising it wisely.