John Armstrong: An inept plot - with a sting for Goff

Labour Party Phil Goff at today's press conference, where he announced the suspension of MP Chris Carter. Photo / NZPA

Chris Carter's attempt to destabilise Phil Goff's leadership of the Labour Party must rank as one of the most ineptly executed political plots since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up England's Parliament.

But that verdict assumes Carter was acting alone. He is an unlikely front man for any group of otherwise silent dissidents. But if he is - and some suspect that might be the case - then Goff has an awful lot to worry about.

What is unparalleled is Carter's unfathomable deviousness in writing letters, the authorship of which he obviously intended to remain anonymous, and sending them to press gallery journalists.

Such gross disloyalty made it easy for Goff to have him expelled from the Labour caucus. It took less than 10 minutes for an emergency meeting of Labour MPs to terminate Carter's 17-year membership.

His membership of the Labour Party will lapse when Labour's national council expels him at its meeting tomorrow week.

As he has done throughout this saga, Goff has displayed judgment, restraint and a no-nonsense decisiveness.

But the circumstances in which his profile is being raised are hardly ideal.

He is having to clean up a mess. No matter how tidy a job he does, voters are repelled by such ructions.

They do not like to be associated with parties having political ructions.

Carter's assertion that most Labour MPs don't think Goff is up to winning next year's election is especially damaging. Whether true or not, the public will believe it simply because it is absurd to think Labour MPs haven't had their doubts.

That statement is also a portent that Carter won't shut up after his expulsion.

The timing of all this could hardly be worse for Goff. If Labour goes into next year still behind National in the polls by the present level of about 20 percentage points, Goff can kiss the 2011 election goodbye. And probably his leadership beforehand.

He has about five months maximum to make inroads into National's lead in the polls. He may now have to contend with a running commentary from the sidelines - unless Carter can be persuaded to resign from Parliament.

That would leave Labour fighting a tricky byelection in a seat in which National topped the party vote at the last election,

It is likely that Labour would win a byelection if it put up the right candidate. But defeat cannot be completely ruled out. In which case, Goff would again be toast.

The blunt truth is that Goff survives as leader simply for lack of a suitable alternative. But caucus desperation will ultimately deem any alternative is better than the status quo.

Much hangs on the advice Carter gets from his friend and mentor Helen Clark, and whether she tells him to shut up for the good of the party. That would be an irony, as Goff's ambitions came close to destroying Clark's leadership in the mid-1990s.