We're on a quest to help David Shearer identify the MP who told Patrick Gower that Shearer had been put on notice by his caucus colleagues; a very disloyal thing to do. So far, as we work down from the top of Labour's rankings to the bottom, Shane Jones and Clayton Cosgrove have emerged as leading suspects.
We're down to #9 in Labour's ranking list today, and that's Maryan Street. Ms Street served as Labour Party president between 1193 and 1995, and she entered Parliament via the list in 2005. She rose quickly from a position of #36. By 2008 she had rocketed to #9 on the list, and was even being talked about as a potential leadership aspirant. Ms Street's stocks rose further in 2011 when she was ranked at #7 on the Labour Party list, but under David Shearer, her career seems to have stalled.
Ms Street has been all but invisible over the last year or so. The fact that she is a past president of the party suggests that she is perhaps better versed in the dark arts of wheeling and dealing behind the scenes rather than the cut and thrust of Parliament. She would certainly know how the media operates.
Maryan Street is a hard one to read. Clearly, under David Shearer her star is on the decline. Tony Ryall had such an easy ride in the Health portfolio with Ms Street unable to lay a glove on him that Mr Shearer was forced to bring in Annette King as Health spokeswoman in the February reshuffle. That would hardly inspire loyalty in her leader.
But unless she is going to be part of a Cunliffe leadership ticket (and let's face it; she would run rings around Nanaia Mahuta), we can't see her as being a key mover in inciting disorder in the caucus, the media and the blogosphere. We simply don't believe that to be her modus operandi.
On that basis alone, we rate Maryan Street as a 5/10. She COULD be the guilty party, but we don't think that she is; there are other far more likely candidates.
And who knows; tomorrow we may unearth one of them!
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