An 8-month-old baby is entitled to have tantrums, especially if he's teething and flying across the world with his mum and dad and being made to stay in a foreign environment while his fangs are pushing through. If Prince George is bellowing as loudly as his dad says, well, really, who can blame him?
It's quite another matter, however, for the Leader of the Opposition to be publicly throwing his toys out of the cot.
David Cunliffe is a hell of a lot older than Prince George and not nearly as cute, so it's much more difficult to excuse his bad temper. His petulant outburst this week, complaining that John Key was milking the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for his own advantage, was embarrassing.
Cunliffe complained that face time with the photogenic royal family should be split as evenly as possible between himself (as Leader of the Opposition) and the Prime Minister, especially as this is election year. However, he had only been scheduled for a single one-on-one meeting with Prince William and a trip to Blenheim on Wednesday.
He insisted he wasn't playing politics and that he would leave it to New Zealanders to decide whether he was being treated fairly. What tosh. Of course he's playing politics. It's disingenuous of him to suggest otherwise. Perhaps the reason Cunliffe is not getting more face time with Prince William is that the prince got wind of the Labour leader's conversational starters.
