John Armstrong: Sideshow's over at Last Chance Saloon

John Tamihere has been given more than a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket. He has been given a severe slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket.

Just look at the wording of the censure motion passed unanimously at Labour's caucus meeting yesterday.

It inadvertently highlights the limited room for manoeuvre the party had when it came to punishing its wayward MP.

Mr Tamihere's aggrieved colleagues may feel all the better for "severely censuring" him, rather than just merely "censuring" him. The distinction is not going to worry him one jot.

The censure, however worded, cannot disguise the obvious: Mr Tamihere survives. He gets one more "last chance".

That is the bottom-line result from more than a week of acrimony, embarrassment and apology which is all down to him.

The censure is a compromise born of expedience: the necessity that the Labour leadership stop annoying the not-inconsiderable number of voters who identify so strongly with what Mr Tamihere has to say.

The Prime Minister did not pretend otherwise in Parliament yesterday when she responded to Opposition accusations she had failed to force Mr Tamihere's resignation by saying she had "exercised her judgment in the interests of the Labour Party".

While the Opposition tries to paint this policy of appeasement as weakness, Labour is portraying her compassion for a colleague under stress as showing strength.

However, his stress levels were apparently not deemed sufficiently high to excuse him a blistering dressing-down from Helen Clark during the caucus meeting.

Something has been made very clear to him. He will be censured only once. His next lapse will see him no longer a Labour candidate.

The Opposition has a point. The censure is not on a par with her eye-balling Mr Tamihere less than 24 hours earlier when she urged him to think seriously about leaving politics - thus opening the resignation option.

However, as a halfway house between the messy politics of de-selection and him getting off scot-free, censure was the best option.

For all the talk about Mr Tamihere being given "space" to reflect on his future, the longer the fuss over his interview in Investigate magazine dragged on, the more the party worried about collateral damage to Labour's poll ratings.

The danger was fourfold: first, there was the risk of seriously weakening Labour's attachment to those voters willing to back the party out of respect for Mr Tamihere; second, the bickering was making the party look increasingly divided; third, Mr Tamihere and Helen Clark were starting to dig into opposing positions from which it would be difficult for them to pull back without losing face; fourth, the whole affair was drowning out positive Government initiatives.

Yesterday's solution may not have given everyone in Labour what they wanted, but they all got something.

Mr Tamihere may be chastened, but he is still a Labour MP - and that was his fundamental objective once he got into such deep trouble. Those he has offended can argue he has been punished.

Above all, the sideshow had to be shut down.

The Prime Minister gets peace in her time - at least until the next time.