KEY POINTS:
Loose language? Bill English may have been forced to eat humble pie with what was effectively an apology to his leader yesterday.
But his insistence that remarks which were secretly caught on tape were simply a poor choice of words on his part takes some swallowing.
How else was he to explain them away, though? What was said at last Friday's cocktail party at National's annual conference was said. Simple as that. The words cannot be retracted.
English's comment about wanting to sell Kiwibank "eventually" was clearly him expressing his honest opinion during what he would have assumed was a private conversation with conference delegates he could trust not to break a confidence.
It is reprehensible that someone would tape the private conversations of senior politicians at such a function. However, the ethics are irrelevant. The political reality is that English was caught out.
The same applies to other secretly taped material from the same function, this time comments by Lockwood Smith about having to swallow some "bloody dead fish" to get into Government "to do the things you want to do".
That may be a statement of the obvious. But it is not a statement any politician would make publicly.
Labour, naturally, is screaming "secret agenda".
Public outing of English's view on Kiwibank's long-term ownership and Smith's warning that MMP elections are not won by "scaring the horses" have certainly embarrassed the two MPs and their party.
But the remarks don't add up to much more than the hint of a hint that National might have a secret agenda.
The really damaging effect of the remarks is to turn the argument away from Labour having to prove National does indeed have a secret right-wing agenda to National having to convince people it doesn't.
The MPs' utterances are a windfall for Labour, which can now try to deflect attention from economic woes and focus the electorate on one simple question: can National be trusted?
One of the strengths of John Key's leadership is that he was not part of National's broken promises of the 1990s - unlike English and Smith. He marked a break from the past.
Key has further sought to rebuild trust in National by positioning himself as a pragmatic centrist, rather than a reforming free-market ideologue.
National's conference last weekend was also all about reassuring middle-ground voters that they have nothing to fear from voting National.
That all turned to custard in the following days. English's frankness has not been helped by Kiwibank now having some 600,000 customers who obviously prefer to have all or some of their accounts with a bank that is not foreign owned.
This is not just a privatisation issue. It also has a politically explosive nationalistic element which would normally have politicians keeping well clear.
In its resulting haste to shut things down, National has spouted no less than five stances on the bank's future ownership - National has no plans to sell Kiwibank, National will eventually sell Kiwibank, National will not sell Kiwibank, National is unlikely to sell Kiwibank, National will not sell Kiwibank in its first term in government.
As Lockwood Smith declares on the secret tape, National has to gain the confidence of the people before it will get the chance to do more things it wants to do in government.
Three months before the election, that confidence has taken a knock. Whether National has a secret agenda or not, Labour had to instil in people's minds the idea that it might. That task has now been made a good deal easier.
