Dim-Post on Opposition Leader

A classic Dim-Post:

Rumours, speculation and wild gossip swirl through the gray streets of the nations capital this week, with businessmen, civil servants and fishwives all speculating on the secret identity of the Labour parties noble and courageous new leader; the only man in Wellington brave – or foolish – enough to defy the terrible might of the Key administration.

The National Party has vowed to seek out and destroy the noble yet unknown politician who has captured the hearts of the political left with his quick-witted press releases and bold opposition to suspending superfund payments – but with his identity a mystery the bumbling attempts of the fiendish Nats are doomed to failure.

Deputy Labour leader Annette King has denied knowing the name of the dashing masked hero but has confirmed that under extraordinary circumstances she can contact him, revealing that she alerts him to a crisis either by wearing a red carnation in her corsage when attending balls, placing a vase of the same flowers in her bedroom window at midnight or messaging his facebook page. …

King laughed merrily at suggestions that her old friend and colleague Phil Goff is the shadowy champion of the left. ‘Poor old Phil? Not in a million years. He couldn’t even make it to Andrew’s press conference because he locked himself in his office bathroom. Phil is sweet and trusting and has a good command of trade and defense issues but he could never match the bold flair and derring-do of our mysterious new captain,’ she said sighing and staring out her rain-streaked office window at the stormcast Wellington skies.

But King’s loyalty to her hapless, bumbling friend may yet pose a threat to Labour’s secret hero; sources within National have revealed that the parties senior strategists are setting a trap for the masked Labour leader, forcing King to lure him out of hiding by threatening to attack Goff in the House if King does not co-operate.

‘She knows that Goff is too naive and good natured to defend himself and that the Nat’s will tear him apart, so she’s trapped into sacrificing her leader to save her friend,’ a senior National staffer said, speaking off the record before twirling his mustache and chuckling darkly.

As of press time the evil scheme appears to have been unsuccessful; Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and senior cabinet MP’s Simon Power and Murray McCully thought they had trapped the Labour leader in a Select Committee hearing but when they entered the room they found only Goff, slumbering gently in the corner.

Danyl really should be given a column in a newspaper. And his ending:

The National MP’s dashed their hats to the ground and swore in frustration. Upon awaking Goff insisted to them that he was Labour’s mysterious hero, at which the men laughed uproariously and clapped Goff on the shoulder.

‘But I’m the leader,’ Goff told them. ‘I’m head of the party goddamn it. Why won’t anyone listen to me?’

The real identity of the opposition leader remains a mystery.

They seek him here, they seek him there …