From the outside in and back again

Aaron Gilmore has suffered a public downfall and only himself to blame. 

The reaction of the media is hardly surprising. Whaleoil had a joyous hit of the heroin of online traffic repeatedly nailing a target like it was 5 metres in front of him, a young lawyer has proven only that he could not cover up a warm set of scones with a tea towel; and Brand National and Key have run away faster from it all than Helen Clark in a Crown limo. 

The only interesting angle to me is that it wasn't even a stereotypical Nat behaving like a prat.

Aaron Gilmore was an outsider.

He promoted himself as a boy-come-good and that's where he has come unstuck. He is not a blue-blooded Nat, he didn't go to the right school or have a National party pedigree in his family and, unlike Simon Bridges, is not in the least bit tame or even "tick the box" corporate.

Gilmore was guilty and hung on trying too hard to behave how he thinks a National Party MP should from the time he scribed his ridiculously lengthy CV (my eyes watered over with tears of laughter from Rebecca Wright's piece on Campbell Live).

To top it all off in his maiden speech he even claimed to even be Maori, which is great news for us whiteys as we can now dutifully disown him.

All of the aforementioned means regardless of how much money he may have earned himself he will like most of us, never be a member of the "club". He is therefore completely expendable if causing problems to a hierarchy in any walk of life let, alone an engine like the National Party. It is the same in business and after working all around the world it is astounding he has not figured that out. 

Large organisations require drones who do not upset the boat, put too many non-conformists together and you have the ACT Party.  Need I say more? Money does not buy you a smidgen of real power or privilege in life unless you have a hell of a lot of it, now hundreds of millions of dollars. You may work for the club or be even allowed in as a member and to dine at the table, but you will never be allowed into the special room.   

Even at the highest of consumption levels you should never perform any sort of rendition of "don't you know who I am?" despite the barman being a dickhead or the Treasury official wrong. It proves you are not actually important enough in life. Bar staff should know your name as it is printed on your credit card and at a conference on a name badge, but they should only remember you for your tip. 

Threatening to bring in someone more powerful than yourself to fix your problems with a service worker highlights your own inadequacy in negotiation skills.

The clean-up of this debacle was ghastly and not the National Party way of violent yet silent.  

It showed a lack of ability to handle those who do not abide by the Tory right of behaving like prats privately, but never actually getting caught doing so. For a start, a real Tory would never leave evidence of a sorry note at a conference. That was just plain sad. 

Gilmore isn't the first and will not be the last person in the National Party who name drops their association with John Key and pretends they can solve minor problems by threatening to call the PM.

In life, people lie or embellish if they wish to sell goods or services or promote themselves and most are far more skilled and charismatic at it than Gilmore.

It all looks terrible when things go wrong being sold a dummie, but politics is one of the most important arenas where people are properly vetted. The media have exposed in a week more than enough for us to wonder what the hell Gilmore was doing on the list in the first place.

National has created new special needs positions for non-Tory types on their MMP party list to claim they are a broad church. This incident added to Paul Quinn highlights the need to ensure that those brought from the outside into their tent are not going to bring it tumbling down. 

Unless they are put there for a specific purpose like a Tim Groser, they need at least a history in the party slaving away to prove they are going to pull the nice Tory line and behave themselves in the time honoured fashion of bending over and taking it for the party. 

Roll on the next entertainment in an outspoken Maori activist lesbian with zero history in the party to replace a state-house raised Maori (remember that, please), too heterosexual boy-come-good male.

Claudette Hauiti may be the true "utu" Gilmore dishes as she is more than capable of Marilyn Waring type chaos if the National Party handles her as badly.

Lawyer Cathy Odgers blogs as Cactus Kate.