Editor’s Desk: No love lost between Merome Beard and Nationals after defection, but where to from here?

Breaking up with someone via text message is a cardinal sin in relationships. This is especially so if you ghost them beforehand by not returning their calls, and have already shacked up with someone else before you deliver the harsh news. Even in a work relationship, it’s pretty poor form. A bitter political break-up shook the halls of Parliament this week — reverberating into the regional electorates in our own backyard — when North West Central MLA Merome Beard defected from the Nationals to the Liberal Party. Ms Beard informed her colleagues and party leader Shane Love — who had been trying to reach her for days after hearing “rumours” — in a WhatsApp message at 7pm on Tuesday night — just minutes before The West Australian ran with the exclusive yarn. At face value, it was a pretty harsh way to handle news that would have been awkward and messy at best, but has the ability to turn toxic very easily, especially when you still have to work together. The Nats had a right to feel aggrieved and betrayed. They invested time and money in Ms Beard, and provided her with the platform which enabled her to enter politics in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. Politicians trying to save their own skin and do what’s best for their own ambitions is nothing new. That’s why the Nats are looking to run in some metro seats, given electoral reforms will diminish country representation. Ms Beard wants to remain in politics and continue serving the people in her electorate. She denies she’s a “traitor” or a “rat”. But she saw the writing on the wall: her North West Central seat is likely to become obsolete under proposed new boundaries, and she would have faced a preselection fight against Mr Love for the new combined electorate of Mid West. It’s a fight she would have lost, and her 2½ years in politics would have come to an abrupt end. Ms Beard saw an opportunity to jump ship that would serve her ambitions, and she took it. There may be other internal reasons that factored into her decision. But she didn’t have to treat her ex-boss and colleagues so shabbily on the way out the door. The questions that remain are: will Mr Love hand over the Opposition reins to the Liberals’ Libby Mettam? And can the Libs and Nats actually work cohesively together after this internal bust-up? On the first front, Mr Love may feel like he wants to dig his heels in even further after Ms Beard’s desertion. But it appears now more than ever, it’s a case of when, not if, Ms Mettam officially becomes leader of the Opposition. The Nats will want to secure the right conditions for themselves in the deal, but the Libs arguably have the upper hand at the negotiating table. There have been a couple of examples of WA politicians defecting in recent years — former North West Central MP Vince Catania jumped ship from Labor to the Nats, and former Geraldton MLA Ian Blayney switched from the Libs to the Nats. If the bad blood that boiled over for years between Labor and Mr Catania is any indication, getting over such a bombshell move may not be easy — especially when this case involves traditional Coalition partners. Voters will ultimately have their say in 2025 as to whether they agree with Ms Beard’s bold move. The Liberals are facing a gargantuan task to rebuild at the 2025 election. I’m not even talking about being in the ballpark of victory, but to start the long road back from political oblivion where they live with two (now three) Lower House seats. And now they’ve put their biggest ally and major asset in the country party off-side. Could it backfire on them? And it’s important to remember — using a noughties analogy of that Sex and the City episode in which an idiot ditched Carrie via a Post-it note — most people feel sorry for the dumpee, not the dumper, especially in such unceremonious circumstances. Nobody ever said politics wasn’t a brutal business.