Ah; so that's who it is...

There's been a bit of speculation over the identity of the "senior Labour MP" who broke ranks and spilled their guts to Tracy Watkins from the Dom-Post.

There will also doubtless be speculation as to the identity of the "One senior Labour MP" who told Duncan Garner that the latest 3News and One News polls were “depressing and its dead man's territory”.

Are these people one and the same, or is there more than one "senior Labour MP" who is talking to journalists about his or her concerns with the current Labour leadership in the wake of a series of awful poll results?

In the meantime, Cameron Slater seems to have got to the bottom of it; he blogs:

It looks like the cam­paign is build­ing for a new lead­er­ship team in Labour.

The nar­ra­tive that is now com­ing through via known left­wing jour­nal­ists is that Shane Jones is the only per­son pre­pared to step up to assist, the oth­ers are cow­ards and that Phil Goff will still lead Labour. This same mes­sage has been fed rather nicely through back chan­nels to Matthew Hooton as well.

Two weeks ago I was can­vassed for my thoughts on the prospects of Jones return­ing. I said to the Labour MPs who asked that I though Jones had the guts, and force of char­ac­ter to come back. I thought that his front foot­ing his porn spend­ing and rapidly apol­o­giz­ing neutered the issue at the time, and if you com­pared his con­tri­tion with Phil Goff’s when he gets thing wrong the dif­fer­ences were stark.

I blogged about the sug­ges­tion that Shane Jones was being pushed for­ward to replace Annette King. I was scoffed at and Annette King loudly said oth­er­wise. Phil Goff and Annette King blamed all this on a nasty National party con­spir­acy. Both of them ignore the incon­ve­nient truth that their cau­cus is not happy and will do any­thing includ­ing talk­ing to blog­gers to effect change.

There is a move afoot and Shane Jones is the one at the fore-front of it.

It seems that Jones has set his sights just a little lower than the Labour leadership, in a strategic move for promotion post-election But is it too little, too late for Labour? The plot thickens...