Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's gloves off or hands off for election run-up

After Judith Collins' outburst, Jacinda Ardern was cornered into sacking Iain Lees-Galloway. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In the wake of a round of political sackings on both sides of the House, it feels like there are two choices facing the political leaders of our two biggest parties in this already-nasty election: gloves off or hands off.

Hands off would be the more welcome choice. No one wants the kind of politics where MPs are sacked for their private indiscretions. But, after Iain Lees-Galloway's sacking for an office affair, the option of gloves off feels like a very real option in a way it hasn't before.

Let's be honest about why Lees-Galloway's been sacked. It stretches belief to accept it was really for the "crime" of an office affair and nothing else. These rumours had been going around Wellington for months. I'm told (including by a Labour source) that the Prime Minister's chief of staff and Labour Party Whips - who are responsible for party discipline - knew weeks ago. Given that the Prime Minister's Office refuses to say when these three were first told, it remains possible that they have known for weeks, just like the rest of town. In which case, if it was a sackable offence this week, why wasn't it a sackable offence when they first heard about it?

It's fair to reach the conclusion that Lees-Galloway wasn't really sacked for an office affair. He was more likely sacked for political convenience. The PM had given information to Judith Collins, which led Collins to swiftly move on Andrew Falloon. So, when Collins - possibly in a deliberate snookering move - reciprocated with information about Lees-Galloway, the PM needed to match that decisiveness and sack her own reprobate too.

This doesn't reflect well on either party leader. Not on Collins for weaponising an MP's dirty secret. Not on the PM for having taken so long to find her spine in sacking ministers that it became a political sore she needed to cauterise by sacking Lees-Galloway over a private affair. There is no equivalence, by the way, between the the PM's office passing information to Collins and Collins doing the same back. The allegations the PM received about Falloon sending porn to teenagers are worrying enough to prompt police to reopen their investigation. The allegations about Lees-Galloway having an affair with a consenting, professional, adult woman are nothing more than his and her private business.

Regardless of what the true motivation for the sacking was, the stated reason - the one that will go down in history - is that Iain Lees-Galloway lost his job for sleeping with a staff member. This is now the precedent. This now sets the bar very, very low.

Which brings us to the gloves off option. This sacking means that if the rumours around Wellington are true - and they did prove true about Lees-Galloway - there are likely a number of other MPs who could come unstuck for similar behaviour. The thing saving them is that their party leader hasn't (yet) been handed an email fingering them.

Doesn't this present a very tempting proposition to political party leaders? Next time their party is under intense pressure (just like National was during the Falloon porn text affair), how tempting will it be to conveniently receive yet another email about an opposing party's MP having an office affair, knowing the new precedent is a headline-grabbing sacking? And how convenient that there are so many rumours out there just waiting to be turned into emails.

Don't tell yourself that's simply too cynical to be possible. This is already a surprisingly nasty election campaign. As the finish line draws nearer, it'll only become more tempting to fire any and all available weapons. Office affairs just got weaponised.