Tim Dower: My bet is Dr Sharma will be gone by the weekend

Now, Dr Sharma.  The longer it drags on the uglier it gets, and there's even a whiff of the Jami-Lee Ross about the whole thing now. I saw Dr Sharma on the TV news last night and he comes across as quite convincing, even straight-up. But then he is a politician albeit a very junior one and he's had experience of pitching himself, and doing his best to come across as an honest broker. So, how seriously do we take him? Has he been bullied, or is it actually him that's the bad guy? Nno one can work with the man. Or has he, like Jami-Lee did, got a bit carried away, does he have an overblown sense of his own importance? Thing is, back bench MPs and especially the current crop of very new members on Labour's back benches, mostly know their place. Their job is to cheer at the right time...ask a pre-prepared patsy question to a Minister if it's their turn...keep a seat warm on a select committee...and so on. Back benchers make up the numbers basically. They're allowed to visit local kindies and put up social media posts when they take their dog for a walk. But otherwise they keep their mouths shut and their heads down, toe the line, and leave the serious politics to the grown-ups. Sharma himself said as much to Newshub last night, talking about Labour's instructions to new MPs, quote "shut up, don't talk about anything...don't say anything for which the Prime Minister has to do a media stand-up". So they had a meeting behind his back to make sure all the other junior MPs were on board and they've been shunning him since. My money is that he'll be expelled from the Labour Party by the weekend. The Prime Minister has already said he's on his last strike and just like Jami-Lee Ross, Dr Sharma seems hell bent on going down in flames. Question is, does he have enough to take anyone down with him? Or will he, like Jami-Lee, fade into irrelevance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.