"He'll make a great addition to the National Government," says John Key. Everyone's talking about the Jones boy but, in a TV interview, he says he's going into "silent mode".
A pity if it's true. He's the master of the mean one-liner that distracts with laughter as it knee-caps the victim. How a man who had trouble trotting sedately round the political ring with a pack of "geldings" will fare on the Key payroll should the National Party get back in, is anyone's guess.
There's not much stallion or mongrel left in any of the Nat MPs put out to graze; the only political positions that appear to be available are the missionary or that of an obedient cog in a well-oiled machine.
Forget the geldings - as senior staff, under Murray McCully you'd think he'd have all the agency and independence - of a 17th century courtly eunuch. But perhaps Jones knows what few of us have been slow to apprehend. That is; it's the senior technocrats who wield the real power and paradoxically hold almost no responsibility in our democracy, locally and nationally. It's the political show ponies who are trotted out - who inhumanely have to be morally above humanity and who periodically sacrifice themselves to the public appetite for scandal.
It's the officials; the CEOs, the senior management who inform the politicians and invisibly lean decisions one way or another and they often get paid a whole lot more than those sent to the front lines of public opinion every electoral round. The political ponies come and go but the staff remain on an endless carousel designed solely it seems to serve the maintenance of the status quo. Jones' mongrel go at the supermarkets - long a source of disgruntlement from producers and one reason they've had to foster farmers' markets to get properly paid for their produce - showed real political grunt.
