Andrew Bolt: Mark Latham hits a new low mark

Former leader of the “progressive” Labor Party Mark Latham is defending a drunken lech who groped and insulted women.

Mark Latham nearly became our prime minister. But now this former leader of the “progressive” Labor Party is defending a drunken lech who groped and insulted women at my work.

Latham, now the One Nation leader in the NSW parliament, is furious that I publicly criticised Chris Smith, who until Tuesday was a fellow presenter on Sky News.

Smith had got drunk at a pub after a Sky News Christmas party and left some of my female colleagues outraged and in tears.

It’s not the first time he’s done something like that, so I said on TV he’s got to go.

He’s since been fired by both Sky and by 2GB.

But Latham hit the roof and I wonder whether even One Nation can afford to have a man who seems so lacking in judgment and so brimming with hate.

Latham accused me on Twitter of disloyalty, calling me an “ego-filled maniac” with the “heart of a caraway seed”, who was guaranteed to be “out of the trenches” if a Sky News colleague was in strife and “dancing on their grave” within 24 hours.

Mark Latham has hit a new low. Picture: Gaye Gerard

He even threatened to give “a parliamentary speech spilling the beans on Bolt himself” because “no one in their private life has been impeccable”. He knows he cannot be sued if he smears people in parliament.

Two things about this amaze me.

First, Latham apparently believes I owe my loyalty at Sky to the lecherous older male and not to the young women who were monstered.

That is amazing.

What does it say about his priorities that this politician even threatens to abuse his parliamentary privileges to punish a man who stood up for women accosted by a drunk?

Second, Latham should know his claim that I abandon colleagues in strife is a lie, because among the people at News Corp I have tried to save is Mark Latham.

I fought to keep him at Sky when his big mouth got him in strife, and I fought to bring him back as one of my weekly regulars.

But Latham’s tender pride seems to resent being in debt to anyone. Look how he turned on the Labor MPs who nearly made him prime minister, betraying their confidences in his poisonous diary after he quit federal politics.

I’d again advise One Nation’s federal leader, Pauline Hanson, to watch what she confides to Latham, because the man with a record of disloyalty is … not me.