Lee chips off some of the teflon

What a disaster Melissa Lee has turned out to be.
She came, she saw, she regularly put both feet in her mouth and blew any chance National had of taking Helen Clark’s old seat.
Her train wreck of a campaign for the Mt Albert by-election shows what a lightweight she really is. The Saint always had doubts about her ability and was somewhat surprised why Key and the Nat’s hierarchy decided to parachute her into Mt Albert as their preferred candidate. This will be a good reminder to Key and National that despite polling well nationally, they cannot make arrogant and silly decisions and expect the punters to back them unconditionally.
The reality is Mt Albert is one of the most Labour-leaning seats you can get in this country. In fact, you could put up a monkey with a red rosette on his chest and Mt Albert slawarts would vote for it. And - by plumping for the inanely boring and dull David Shearer - they have done exactly this!
Yet the Nats still believed that Melissa Lee could be a chance and that is why they picked her. This is a woman whose only claim to fame before her Mt Albert meltdown was to be voted the 50th sexiest female MP in the world (I am sorry, but if Lee is in the top 50 of the best looking female parliamentarians on planet earth – then numbers 51 down must have faces only their mothers could love!)
It was always going to be an uphill battle for National to win Mt Albert. They needed a smart candidate to run a flawless campaign and a reputation for hard work and humility to pull off a win. The only thing Melissa Lee managed to do to her reputation was to completely destroy it by shoving her foot, ankle, knee, leg – and on more than one occasion – her whole body into her mouth at regular intervals and with this went any chance of a National victory.
The Saint suggests the only reason Lee did not make a bigger fool of herself on the news each night, was that the media got distracted by the antics of her former colleague Richard Worth and his penchant for hiding the Salomi in various female ethnic minorities.
Winning Mt Albert was never going to mean much to the overall shape of New Zealand’s political landscape. However, the win for Shearer and Labour means Phil Goff gets to stay as that party’s ‘Phil in’ leader for a bit longer. While the hammering the Nats took means John Key’s teflon coat is now more slightly damaged in the public’s eye and Melissa Lee’s political future is about as bright as the deceased ministerial career of Richard Worth.