Is David dazed and confused?

David Shearer gave an interview with Sean Plunket on RadioLive just before the 11am news this morning in which he dismissed rumours of a coup within Labour. Fair enough, although Duncan Garner has since said that he is still getting leaks from within the Labour caucus, which is clearly not a happy place at the moment. 

But Mr Shearer also said something which we found astounding. When asked by Plunket about the stories that his colleagues had given him two months to improve his performance, the Labour leader said that he had only heard those stories last night.

We beg to differ. On Sunday 30th June, 3News reported thus:

Despite the win for Labour last night, leader David Shearer has admitted that the party is in a "flat patch" with its popularity nationwide.

The admission came during an interview about a threat to his leadership if there's no improvement in the next two months.

A win makes Mr Shearer happy, but still angry at 3 News for revealing a Labour MP says Mr Shearer is on two months' notice to improve or face the axe.

"If this person's not willing to come forward or you're not willing to talk about them, why should I talk about them?" asks Mr Shearer.

The MP said "spring time is when people will get really nervous…we don't want to get into the "Goff-zone", where it's too late to change the leader".

"I don't know," says Mr Shearer. "I haven't heard any of this sort of thing before, so I can't really comment any further than that."

And on the same day, the Otago Daily Times reported:

Labour leader David Shearer has been forced to deny allegations of division amongst his party caucus. Mr Shearer, who appeared TVNZ's Q+A this morning following Labour's successful Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election result, was quizzed about the allegations and reports of a possible party leadership challenge.
"I'd like to know who the MP is," Mr Shearer said in reference to reports some MPs had told media their could be a challenge to his leadership within two months due to poor polling results. 

We know that a week is a long time in politics, but Mr Shearer's reported statements of 30th June completely contradict what he told Sean Plunket today, 10 days later.

And whilst Mr Shearer reckons that he doesn't read blogs (though perhaps he should) we would not that our Whodunnit? series, designed to help him to ferret out the Labour leaker also started on the 30th of June, in response to Mr Shearer's desire to find out who the guilty party was.

Now we are not for one moment suggesting that David Shearer is lying. But the last several weeks have been a difficult time for him with poor polls, the SkyCity corporate box fiasco, being put on notice by his caucus, the furore over the proposed Man-Ban and last night's apparent attempt to topple him. It would not be surprising if David Shearer was a little dazed and confused as everything unravels all around him.

But given this apparent memory loss, and of course his forgetting of his Chase Manhattan bank account when doing his Pecuniary Interests returns (although he managed to remember it when doing his tax returns), he should be very careful of accusing other MP's of memory losses.