True leaders lead intuitively. They don’t need courses, gurus or management courses, they just lead.
Judith Collins, with one simple statement, has told her MPs that she’s got their back:
National leader Collins says [sic] is shocked by the “nasty and dirty” bullying of a teen National candidate who has apologised for sharing a photo of himself imitating Hitler.
William Wood, 18, apologised yesterday for the image, which was taken four years ago when he was aged 14.
The photo, which has been reported on by media since surfacing online, shows Wood posing like Hitler with what appears to be a painted-on small moustache.
It appears to be a photo he sent to a friend – or group of friends – which appears to have been leaked.
Collins said today that Wood, National’s candidate for the Palmerston North electorate, had faced severe bullying since the incident emerged.
“He’s been targeted and bullied and I will not stand for that either,” she told reporters today.
Collins described the fallout as a “shocking attack on a young man”.
The fact he had promptly apologised yesterday was a sign of “immense maturity”.
“And I would like to say to him don’t worry, we’ve got your back,” she said.
Note she said we’ve got your back, an implied statement that the party, under her leadership, is backing him.
This is what a leader does, they lead, and it sends a signal to other members of caucus that you’ve got a leader who backs you too.
That goes hand in glove with her previous actions over the Andrew Falloon incident, that if you are a creep that hand you feel on your back is there to ease you out the door.
She’s taken exactly the right approach with William Wood for his youthful indiscretion.
It also serves as a reminder that there is nothing the left won’t stoop to in order to nail you for something, anything, that doesn’t fit their constant moveable feast of things to be outraged about.
That should be the end of this episode, the leader has spoken, there will be no lynching at the behest of the baying mob. There is no profit for the left in attacking a teenager.
But, given that such things are now de rigeur for trying force out candidates, perhaps the left should police their own members? All those who have subscribed to Marxist beliefs in all their guises, from Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, and yes Che Guevara and his violent ways should now be hounded from office for endorsing killer ideologies.
Here’s one example:
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