Opinion by Political Editor Duncan Garner
(with generous help from Gordon McBride)
David Shearer has just cost me $100 in red wine.
That was the bet I had a couple of years ago with our Wellington bureau chief Gordon McBride who reckoned that Shearer would be the next Labour Party leader after Phil Goff.
I just couldn't see it. Shearer's a nice guy but way underdone as a politician. Personally and up close he's charming, affable and has confidence.
He has what we journos like to call a great "back story", although I'm getting sick and tired of hearing that hackneyed phrase, it's a bit like "going forward" or "drilling down".
But back to the point; I spent a couple of enjoyable hours with him a few weeks back around Rugby World Cup time.
One thing from that conversation that stuck in my mind, and nagged away at me as I fretted about losing that bet to McBride, was that as Deputy Chief of Mission in Iraq for the United Nations he was pulling good money - around $US500,000 tax free I think - yet he was prepared to come back to New Zealand to be a back-bencher. Let's face it, there's nothing very glamorous or financially rewarding about that job.
So he wasn't back here to retire to the back benches. From bombs in Baghdad to bores in Bowen House. I didn't think so.
But I couldn't find any groundswell of support for Shearer and the leadership - he even told me he didn't really know how to lobby his caucus colleagues and didn't think he'd have a chance.
That was then though.
Shearer’s television appearances since he announced his leadership bid have been hesitant and not what we've come to expect of political leadership. He bumbles and doesn't seem to have a clear thought pattern nor a firm ideological prescription.
He'll get eaten alive by John Key if he doesn't improve - and quickly.
But maybe that's his big attraction. That fact that he isn't "smooth" - McBride likes to use the word oleaginous, but he's just a show-off sometimes - may just be his biggest strength.
Shearer; common man, a real Kiwi, a sort of anti-politican. Maybe that's what got his votes in caucus. Those Labour MPs left after last month's massacre are looking ahead at who's going to be the best shop front for Labour at the next election.
They might be right but first there will be a few embarrassing moments for Labour as Shearer stumbles from gaffe to gaffe before he finds his feet.
And I'll have to buy McBride that wine.