#CoupFever: The Shearer Edition

Yesterday, a breathless Duncan Garner claimed he had a letter proving a Labour Party coup was in the works.  The letter was in Patrick Gower’s possession, it would be aired at 10:30 on TV3 last night, after which Shearer would be rolled and the Cunliffe and Robertson factions begin picking over the corpse.

Trouble is, none of it happened.

And once Bomber Bradbury and David Farrar jumped in, it simply became ‘Night of The Sad Gits’ ¹ on Twitter. (Read it all here, after “unclicking” the open tweet.)

The hosing down of the rumour can be best summed up by iPredict’s two messages bookending the twitscussion:

And the best concluding remark came from Rob Hosking:

Looks like @Garner_Live should lead Labour. He's done what no one else has managed for five years: united the entire caucus.

Mind you, the media does have form in fomenting coups. Who could forget the hirsute Fran Mold, in the days before she ended up as Labour spinmeister, stalking Don Brash with the question “when are you going to resign.” And some would argue the “stalking of Julia Gillard” achieved a similar result.

But you’d have to do better than this.

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1. Hat tip Fundy Post, for both the link and the quip.