Rosemary McLeod: Politics never seemed so shabby

National Party leader Simon Bridges during his press conference over allegation made by Jami-Lee Ross. Photo/Mark Mitchell.

Side partings are danger signs in men, but combined with hair oil, as smeared on by Simon Bridges and Jami-Lee Ross this week, they become explosive.

Biff, bang, kick, scratch: such are the ways of a love affair turned rancid. Hell has no fury like a comb-back spurned and kicked out of caucus.

There was just one way for Ross to go with that: Indignation. Righteousness. Innocence.

The Brett Kavanagh blueprint. It worked a treat for him.

Few scorned wives could keep up an attack on an errant husband for a solid hour, as Ross did with a marvelling media, seemingly without pausing for breath. Women lack the stamina. Skirmishes are more our style.

Was this one of those relationships where one partner says they didn't see the split coming, was shocked and appalled, while the injured partner snarls that they've been warning them for years? And why don't these guys shave?

Hair oil and stubble suggest a man who loafs on the couch with his feet up, monopolising the remote control while stuffing potato crisps into his cake hole and glugging beer.

Picture the oil slick on the cushions.

Ross' performance was tragedy viewed at a distance, enough to distract me from replays of Kanye West, his rival for my entertainment this week, at the White House, and the magic moment when nobody leaps to Donald Trump's aid as West clumsily hugs him.

True love was never lovelier.

National Party MP for Botany Jami-Lee Ross holding his press conference outside the Wellington Central Police Station after his interview with detectives. Photo/NZ Herald.

As Bridges fronted to tell his side of the story, Paula Bennett stood beside him stony-faced, and Judith Collins remarked on Ross's self-immolation while generously sparing Bridges her thoughts on his now fragile leadership.

When will one of them replace him?

The brawl included a fashionable dash of #MeToo in Bridge's claim of Ross harassing four, or maybe lots, of women in Parliament.

Ross summoned up the ghosts of his grandmother and great-grandmother, who he said raised him, as proof that he could never disrespect a woman, while potential complainants — according to Bridges — waited metaphorically in the wings, rolling pins at the ready.

It really doesn't work when men try mining #MeToo for ammunition against each other.

They should leave it to the experts, because men are all suspects until proven otherwise.

Neither is it convincing when a man admits to having been a willing bag man for donations to their capo, then claims a sudden conversion to moral clarity.

Not when its timing is self-serving, and its purpose vengeful.

There is no hero in this stoush.

Neither Ross nor Bridges looks good in the first recording Ross has released, and Ross may well succeed in dragging his leader down with him.

You can apologise for back-stabbing, but it won't be forgotten.

I guess West has a fragile mental state, which is not amusing, and also has the
Kardashians at home to deal with, madness in itself.

I'm not convinced about Ross though; he seems to have prepared for this week's explosion, with secret recordings, for ages.

He talks about having a mental breakdown after he was ousted, but made a swift recovery.

And we have more revelations to come.

Politics never seemed quite so shabby, in this country anyway.

America is another story.

Shabby is routine there nowadays, and Donald Trump is predictably refusing to accept that the Saudis could have brutally murdered their critic Jamal Khashoggi.

I mean, he likes the Saudis, and when a proposed $110 billion arms deal with them is balanced against a mere man's life all thoughts of human rights evaporate. What Khashoggi? Who?