Heather du Plessis-Allan: We all underestimated Gaurav Sharma

We all underestimated Gaurav Sharma, didn’t we? This guy has nerve.

He actually turned up to the caucus meeting where they expelled him today. 

Can you imagine walking into a room full of people who are about to kick you out of the parliamentary party? Imagine how hard that must be. 

But in he went and - according to him - eyeballed the lot of them and tried to explain his case to them and why they needed to investigate his allegations against the former whip Kieran McAnulty.

Then after that - cool as a cucumber - he walked out and held a press conference.  

As if he hasn’t just been kicked out of his own parliamentary party by the lot of them, including the Prime Minister.

This guy has also clearly got resilience. This won’t have been easy for him. 

While he’s been attacking labour for 13 days, they’ve been attacking him back. 

He’s been under 13 days of sustained attack form the entire party: from the Prime Minister who’s painted him as unstable and rolled her eyes on TV at him , from senior MPs like David Parker who called him ‘attention-seeking’, from Labour party aligned commentators like Neale Jones who you might recall was on this show so angry at Sharma he used the word jerk at least twice.  

You have to have a thick skin to put up with two weeks of reputation trashing from the Government, in all the mainstream media, sometimes as the lead story

Most of us wouldn’t be able to cope. We’d crack and go find a rock to hide under and regret having said anything.  And I bet you that’s what Labour would’ve hoped he’d done.  But he hasn’t, which is almost unreal 

If Gaurav Sharma can last this long under sustained attack from the party in government I wouldn’t’ rule out that he’ll keep this up from outside the party now. 

There are a bunch of things he could yet do.

He could yet provide the evidence he claims he has but hasn’t yet provided.  If it exists, he could yet quit parliament altogether and force a by-election in Hamilton West, which is a seat Labour might not win, which would be really embarrassing for them. 

He could also continue with his legal action against the party.

I said at the start of this drama that he was naïve thinking he could take on Labour and the slick PR machine in the Prime Minister’s office. I was wrong.  

He took them on and he’s done damage, if only by busting them at that secret meeting which proved their dishonesty. 

And clearly Labour underestimated him too. I bet they never thought they’d still be reaping Sharma Karma from a backbencher no one had ever heard of 13 days ago. 

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