Barry Soper: Bill English clearly rattled over Barclay texts

The Todd Barclay matter won't go away for Prime Minister Bill English. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Bill English came into his post Cabinet news conference this week smiling broadly, crowing about the international credit rating agency Moody's identifying God's Own with the expectation that we'll be one of the fastest triple A growing economies in the world in the coming years saying it's evidence his Government's getting things about right.

Yeah, well this is the same credit rating agency that got it so wrong when it came to the Global Financial Crisis forcing it earlier this year to pay around a billion dollars for its botch-up, contributing to the worst market crash since the 1930s.

The Prime Minister left the press conference clearly rattled, thinking nosey parker reporters had forgotten his electorate successor Todd Barclay in the wake of Jacindamania and Metiria misery.

But no, they were back at it again, thanks to the stoking ability of the man the politicians hate to love Winston Peters who's been waving around English's cellphone records.

The PM pretends he's not rattled by them but the uneven suck in of his breath gives it away.

He's always pretended the Barclay business was of little interest to him, he was unaware of the details.

But the phone records would tend to suggest otherwise, more than 450 texts that had been sent by English to his frustrated electorate secretary Glenys Dickson in a year, 22 of them in the day before she quit and one in the dead of night, during the early hours of the morning.

English presented it as ain't no thing, saying he sometimes texts people at 1am if he can't get hold of them.

Explaining it away he rather lamely said he was in contact with a lot of people all the time, ranging from family members to others he used to work with and to those he currently works with.

He says he doesn't count up who's being texted and what they're about.

He sounds as prolific as John key was with his smart phone and just as forgetful. There must be something in the drinking water on the Beehive's ninth floor that makes them this way.

And besides it's difficult to understand Bill English's lack of interest about what went on in the electorate where he was the MP for almost quarter of a century.

And surely he could be forgiven for giving his long time secretary advice and support through what was clearly a difficult period which is now again being investigated by the cops.

Don't hold your breath if you're hoping to see what was in the texts.

English has deleted them and the man who's claiming a Prime Ministerial cover-up -
Winston Peters might have the phone log sheet but clearly he doesn't have the contents or he would have spilled the beans by now.