Last month, a private text I sent to a man I considered a friend was made public, and within six hours my hopes of returning to Parliament were over.

I had intended to

Last month, a private text I sent to a man I considered a friend was made public, and within six hours my hopes of returning to Parliament were over.

I had intended to say nothing more and let the story die.

But Chris Finlayson has since published his own account of events, under a headline declaring that he and I are not friends, and some of what he wrote deserves a reply.

This will be my only one.

First, the text itself. What I wrote about Katie Nimon, the MP for Napier, was blunt, harsh and unfair, and I apologised to her for this.

The message was ambiguous, so the way it was interpreted was understandable, though it was not what I meant.

Katie was entitled to set the record straight, and she did so with more grace than I showed her.

Whatever I meant, the words were mine, sent from my phone and the consequences are mine to bear. I take full responsibility.

But there is a second question buried in this saga, and it deserves an airing on behalf of everyone who owns a phone: when did a private message to a friend become “on the record”?

Chris says we were never friends. He is entitled to his definition; I can only offer mine.

There are four members of the former Key Cabinet with whom I have kept in touch since 2017 in a non-political way.

Chris was one of them. When I was elevated to Cabinet in 2017, it was Chris who encouraged me to take on the Treaty Negotiations portfolio based on earlier discussions and interest I had shown in his work.

I enjoyed his company and his humour and our divergent politics never seemed to matter. I also found the book he wrote post-politics worthy of the effort it took to read.

In my experience, some friendships run like this: nothing for months or even years, then a conversation that picks up as if the last one ended yesterday.

To me, that is friendship.

Perhaps Chris and I simply define the word differently. Perhaps that difference is the whole story.

Chris has described my message as a late-night rant.

It was sent at 7.52pm (I work until 11.30pm most nights) and it was neither crafted for an audience nor intended for one.

It was exactly what it looked like: a blunt text from one person to another person he trusted.

Chris’ argument is that because I did not declare the message off the record, it was on it.

I would ask readers to apply that test to their own phones tonight.

By that standard, every unguarded message you have ever sent a friend is a press release in waiting.

The convention most of us live by is the reverse: a message to a friend is private unless agreed otherwise.

And if Chris genuinely believed my text was a matter of public interest, there was a simple and honourable course open to him: pick up the phone and ask, “Are you prepared to say that on the record?”

My answer would have been, “no. I would happily debate the member for Napier on his podcast any time”.

This matters well beyond me, and well beyond politics.

We now conduct much of our friendship by text.

We vent, we overstate, we confide, we phrase things clumsily precisely because we trust the person at the other end to know us and to read us right.

That trust is the operating system of friendship.

If the new rule is that anything written to a friend may be published whenever it becomes useful, then the real rule is that there are no private conversations left and everyone, not just former politicians, should understand that this is the world we are being asked to accept.

I have lost the chance to stand again for the city I love, and that loss is mine.

My wife says I am too trusting, and she is right.

But I would rather keep looking for the best in people and occasionally be wrong than live as though every conversation might one day be produced in evidence.

I gave Napier nine years as its MP and I am proud of the work I did.

I will keep working for this region and this country from outside Parliament, because that is what I know how to do.

One text does not undo that work, and I do not believe it should be the last word on anyone.

What I said about Katie Nimon was my mistake, and I have owned it.

What a private message became afterwards is a question I leave with readers – and with anyone who has ever texted a friend and assumed it would stay between the two of them.