Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is holding firm today, saying she still won’t be firing Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran, even after accepting her resignation.

Curran, who resigned yesterday following a decision to do so Thursday night, had struggled to answer questions this week about her use of a gmail account, fuelling speculation by the opposition that she may be secretly using a hotmail account, something that would demonstrate poor taste.

Rumours circulating Wellington had also claimed Curran had been spotted with a Yahoo account with a xtra.co.nz suffix, but those rumours have yet to be substantiated.

Yesterday morning, Ardern told news programme The Matt & Jerry Show that she wouldn’t be firing Curran, but Curran resigned just hours later, throwing some doubt on the Prime Minister’s statements.

Opposition leader and untapped oil field Simon Bridges said Ardern had “misled New Zealanders” when she told Newstalk ZB that she wouldn’t be “cutting ties” with her broadcasting minister.

“In the morning, the Prime Minister says she won’t be firing her minister, but later that afternoon, that same minister resigns, so evidently, she wasn’t being truthful.”

But Ardern continues to stand firm on her version of events, saying today that she still won’t be firing Curran.

“No, absolutely not,” she reiterated this afternoon. “In this job, there are ups and downs. I think of all us in Wellington are well aware that we have good days, and bad days, and occasionally, we’ll have a stroke in front of everybody on national television. I think she’s paid the price.

“As I have said, I won’t be firing Clare, and I’ll be continuing to not fire Clare for the forseeable future.”

But political analysts view the situation as something of a boiling frog, saying that Ardern will be “forced” to fire Curran “sooner or later.”

“It just reaches a point where, no matter what you try, something has to give,” said 1 News political editor Jessica Mutch. “You can explain the situation, you can downplay it, you can pivot, you can accept their full resignation from cabinet, maybe even politics entirely, or you might even get lucky and they die, but at the end of the day, you still have to fire them.”

Sources close to the Prime Minister’s office say that several other cabinet ministers have approached her to ask whether her not firing them meant she wanted their resignation.