A rare day

Regular readers will know that we are no friend of the Labour Party. But this morning, we are going into bat for them.

Former Labour MP Philip Field is claiming that he was set up by a "gay cabal" in Labour. Transtasman notes, via Kiwiblog:

To add to the gay theme came, like an echo from the past, the accusations of former Labour MP Philip Field. Now out of prison for nearly a year, Field claimed he had been the victim of a gay and lesbian group within Labour who wanted him out of the road due to his profound and deep Christian beliefs.
The existence of a conspiracy minded gay and lesbian group within Labour opposed to Christian beliefs is something we can take as a given. The ability of such a group to conspire with judge, jury and Police to put Field behind bars though is a bit of a stretch.

We agree wholeheartedly with the Transtasman. Philip Field was the author of his own misfortune. And it is sad, but perhaps telling that even after having served his sentence, Field is reluctant to accept that he broke the law .

Not that Labour has ever condemned Field of course. When Field was convicted, Darren Hughes fronted the media to say that Labour accepted the verdict, but that was it. And it wasn't the allegations against him which saw Field expelled from Labour's caucus. It was his decision on the day that Helen Clark was to deliver her election year State of the Nation address to Parliament that speculation broke over Field's involvement in setting up a new party. Upstaging the leader on her dig day was the hanging offence, not the matters over which he was tried, convicted and imprisoned.

But to suggest that a gay cabal engineered his fate is a conspiracy theory of the magnitude of which even Winston Peters, the Crown Prince of conspiracy theories would baulk. Labour may have been guilty of many things which we didn't like, but a take-down of Field because he opposed its gaggle of gays was not one of them.