With Benjamin Doyle forced to step down, there was never going to be a way back after his online behaviour.

The vacancy has now been filled by former Papanui councillor Mike Davidson, who has confirmed he will be entering Parliament as a Green MP.

Ironically, Christchurch voters have now rejected him three times, since he held his Papanui seat.

Davidson has been campaigning alongside Innes councillor Pauline Cotter, seeking a seat on the community board.

It raises a legitimate question. If Doyle had resigned while Davidson was still on council, would he have triggered an expensive by election purely to advance his own political career?

Davidson has struggled to build broad support. On council he was defined less by collaboration than by confrontation, clashing with colleagues and pursuing narrow agendas.

In 2022 voters in Papanui delivered a decisive verdict when Victoria Henstock defeated him by more than two thousand votes. That result reflected how out of step he was with public sentiment.

He also lost the Innes Community Board By-election in 2023 to Ali Jones.

Jones, an independent candidate, received 1,807 votes in the by-election, almost three times as many as the closest contender, Davidson, who received 638 votes.

He then tried his luck in Ilam and was crushed, with Hamish Campbell winning 18,693 votes to Davidson’s paltry 2,391.

He became known for his fixation on cycleways and for the anger he carried into online forums.

Anyone who disagreed with his opinion was labelled as spreading “misinformation.”

His bitterness seemed less about real clashes with Mayor Phil Mauger, who kept an even hand, and more about battles inside his own head. That frustration was vented online, often in sharp attacks.

Although Davidson does not fit the usual profile of a Green MP as a white male, he has morphed with remarkable ease into the party’s ideological playbook, parading a giant tiki around his neck, championing rainbow crossings, and makes a point of using pronouns.

What makes his current manoeuvring even more brazen is that despite securing a seat in Parliament, he is still chasing a community board role.

Troublingly, his ambitions are being cheered on by Pauline Cotter, who has endorsed him for both roles.

It is difficult to see this as anything other than contempt for democracy, an attempt to have it all her way without leaving room for another voice at the board table.

Davidson goes not with the blessing of the public, but with the mandate of the Green Party list.

This is the same party whose former MPs have walked away in disgrace, leaving behind a trail of shoplifting scandals, migrant exploitation, and behaviour that can only be described as bizarre.

Christchurch once had a Green MP who commanded respect across the political spectrum. Eugenie Sage was measured, informed, and grounded in policy detail.

Davidson represents the opposite trajectory, a continuation of performative politics where gestures replace substance.

His arrival in Parliament will not give Christchurch a stronger voice.

He is more likely to show up at whatever protest is fashionable than deliver anything resembling real change.