I am ashamed to admit that right up until now I had been prepared to give David Seymour a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.
While the Treaty Principles Bill was ill-advised and is in the process of being comprehensively proven to be so – I didn’t think there could be any doubt about Seymour’s sincerity in what he thought he was trying to achieve with it – albeit poorly informed and frankly naïve.
I must be fairly naïve myself because I did originally write the whole thing off as a vote-catching exercise which would die a death post-election. I was half right. It caught the votes alright. Sadly, it didn’t die a death.
Scroll forward to the point where Seymour in his role as Associate Minister for Education has been able to make a pig’s ear of the School Lunches Programme – and having presided over a number of school lunch horror stories has now failed to show to a “please explain” meeting with the real Minister for Education Erica Stanford.
And here is what has finally pulled the wool from over my eyes about David Seymour. When asked about his failure to turn up to the meeting with Erica Stanford he petulantly pointed out that he was discussing the matter with the Prime Minister. The very same who gutlessly allowed the Treaty Principles Bill to proceed and since has made flippant comments about school lunches that bear little empathy or understanding of the real world beyond politics or capitalism. Clearly, he doesn’t give much of a stuff about his own Minister Erica Stanford either, or he might have figuratively clipped Seymour around the ear and sent him back to show some respect and follow due process.
This reeks of misogynism on the part of both men. For David Seymour to bypass Erica Stanford, and for the Prime Minister to allow that to happen demonstrates a level of arrogance and disregard that must surely bode well for the ongoing cohesiveness of a coalition that has agreed to accept David Seymour as Deputy Prime Minister even if for only half a term. At least with Winston we could be fairly confident when push came to shove that he would rise to the occasion with considered and coherent wisdom. So far, Seymour has failed to show any such signs to mitigate our doubts.
He is proving himself to be a complete clown in a global setting where one clown already is more than enough. One could be forgiven for thinking Seymour has found a role-model in the antics of Donald Trump which are becoming more ominous by the day, and have included rash statements bearing scant resemblance to the facts, a complete lack of tolerance for any form of diversity, a grasping and entitled view about the resources that others have, and a completely overblown sense of self.
It feels fair to say that so far, the track record of someone we are about to welcome as Deputy Prime Minister has done much to bolster the misgivings that many felt at the time this dodgy arrangement presented itself. I imagine anyone who like me hoped (naively) that eighteen months as the bridesmaid might be enough time to chip off some rough edges will be feeling pretty despondent about now.
7 March 2025
Bring on Winston 😂😂
Thank you for reading my post!