Barry Soper: Gunning for Colin Craig

Former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig. Photo / Nick Reed

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Forget women, what about men and in particular those who meekly rode the coattails of political wannabe Colin Craig during the last election?

Craig went down in a hail of bullets just as he was limping to the winning post. His press secretary was sobbing on the phone, a day out from polling day, saying she'd left the job over what later transpired to be the yet to be explained inappropriate behaviour of her boss.

It dominated the final hours of Craig's campaign and clearly damaged his chances of pulling the party across the five percent threshold and putting it into Parliament. They came tantalisingly close, less than one percent away from the prize he'd personally spent millions on trying to bag.

Then the sniping began, coming to head a few months back with that bizarre press conference where he fronted up with his long suffering wife who stood by her misbehaving hubby. She was there again as he put out his own version of Dirty Politics which contained what he says was an unclean campaign against him.

The days of laying in the lupines at the beach in his business suit looking seductively at the camera must now seem like a pleasant memory of a time when he was seen as an unconventional, but nevertheless serious political contender.

Since then it's all become unstuck, culminating in a weird interview in a sauna where he looked like a hopeful Christian out of Gloriavale, taking a shower in his suit trousers.

But it's the men scorned since his fall from grace who want his entrails for garters. People like the former acting chairman of the party and a former preacher man John Stringer, who in a brief blaze of glory claimed to have the smoking gun, dropping papers he claimed would show his God fearing former leader was guilty of illegal and corrupt practices.

Stringer said Craig had overspent on his election expenses and therefore breached the rules. Trouble is the claims were based on estimates and the alleged overspend was small beer, small enough to keep even a teetotaller like Craig on the level.

Against all of this Craig's threatening to sue Stringer for defamation. A "threat" of defamation and an "estimate" over overspending, they're as bad as each other!