KEY POINTS:
What a septimanem horribilis John Key has had. Which is dog-Latin, I think, for horrible week. And it's not because of his own stuff-up, which must be so galling.
No, the political pratfalls came from two of his most senior MPs, Maurice Williamson and Lockwood Smith. The two old warhorses, sick and tired of languishing on the Opposition benches, can smell the scent of victory.
Even with the complications of MMP, they have dared to dream that power will once more be in their well-shaped, not-too-large and not-too-small, hands.
But they're going to blow it for themselves and the rest of their team if they keep opening their traps without engaging their brains.
Smith, the surely soon-to-be-former Immigration spokesman, repeated anecdotal stories he's heard from vintners in calling for the Recognised Seasonal Employers Scheme to be expanded to include Asian workers.
According to Smith, winegrowers preferred Asian workers over Polynesians because they had smaller hands and didn't have to be educated in personal hygiene.
Many Polynesian workers, according to Lockwood, had to be taught how to use the toilet and shower which was something employers shouldn't be required to do. Well, sure.
But Asia's not a country and given the diversity of ethnicities within the Asian region, I'm quite sure there are some Asians with whopping great hands.
Sun Ming Ming is the 2.3m Chinese basketballer who played for minor league teams in the United States.
He's Asian but I bet his hands are like shovels. If they weren't, they'd look bloody odd.
Mack Pouwhare, from Grapeworx, has come out in support of Smith, saying three-quarters of the staff he employed from Vanuatu needed to be shown how to use and clean the loo, but then that's hardly an exhaustive survey.
Although I don't believe for one wild moment Smith is a phrenology freak and a racist, it's just plain intellectual laziness from an academic to repeat ignorant hearsay.
There are ways of getting your point across. Smith's is not the right way. And Williamson has also been given a telling off for wittering on about toll roads again.
Williamson knows his stuff - he was, after all, Transport Minister for a number of years during the Bolger/Shipley administrations - so if he says tolls will need to rise to cover the costs of building highways, then I believe him.
There's a pattern forming here and it makes me uneasy.
How many of National's senior MPs have been blurting out policy plans and intentions, only to have John Key come in afterwards, rubbishing his shadow cabinet's statements, forcing them to do public penance and generally doing his sympathetic centrist impersonation?
So who's actually in charge here?
Is John Key another David Lange, the popular public face for a party that has a clear agenda that they're choosing not to reveal?
Plenty of Machiavellian men know where all the skeletons are buried within National's ranks.
I hope they're not pulling the strings and we'll see 1984 all over again.
The surest way for John Key to prove he is in charge would be to do a thorough cleaning of National's ranks.
Promote the new generation and clear out the old guard. Loose lips have sunk ships before, and they could well sink National's chances this election.
* www.kerrewoodham.com
