Kate Hawkesby: Turns out Jami-Lee Ross wasn't 'sick' at all, just plotting

How 'sick' was Jami-Lee Ross if he could sit at home and plot the downfall of National and its leader. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT: Yesterday it looked like a circus, today we could just add some boxing gloves and a ring to that tent, maybe some mud.

For a guy you've barely heard of from East Auckland, way to make a name for yourself Jami-Lee Ross.

I actually find myself feeling sorry for the National Party, and sorry for Simon Bridges.

Flanked by all the people rumoured to be lined up to take over his job - Judith Collins, Amy Adams, Mark Mitchell and pitbull Paula Bennett - he did his level best to shut down all Ross's claims, and to sound like the party wasn't imploding before his very eyes.

With the smiling assassins wildly nodding at this side, Bridges tried, albeit in his polite and provincial manner, to look like a guy holding the ship together.

Will it work? Who knows. After yesterday, anything seems possible.

But what of Jami-Lee Ross?

The bit that irks me here is this guy took paid medical leave, he was happy to sit on the teet of the taxpayer, under the guise of illness, and seemingly just strategise some major smackdown of his own party, his own leader, his own caucus.

The whole medical leave thing was cloak and dagger, we were told it was "personal" that he needed "to be with his family", there was an inference that it was embarrassing.

Ross now claims he was 'pushed out' on medical leave, but for a guy so keen to head to battle with an entire party and hold court with the media, why would he roll over on something like that?

And how sick are you if you're able to plot the downfall of your kingdom from behind your wrought iron Botany gates?

And what does that do for not just his own reputation and credibility, but for the way we treat people in the public eye on medical leave?

Should we be second guessing that as some kind of chess move now?

This is a man who didn't take what it means to be a team player seriously, didn't take confidentiality seriously, didn't take medical leave seriously, yet now wants us to take him seriously as an independent MP.

We are now into day three of this sorry saga, with secret tapes going to police today apparently, according to the guy who claims to be straight up and down and not a leaker.

Day three - and yet more to come.

Jami-Lee, if you're remotely interested in taking advice from anyone right now, in the immortal words of The Gambler, know when to fold 'em.