John Armstrong: Tamihere beyond the pale this time

If there was any doubt before, there is none now. John Tamihere's political career is in tatters.

Although Helen Clark has politely ordered him to take extended stress leave, the Prime Minister's directive means he has been punished for his ill-judged remarks about the Holocaust by being unofficially suspended from the Labour Party caucus.

But this is a stop-gap measure. No one was willing to predict last night what will happen next - and whether this is curtains for Mr Tamihere's membership of the Labour Party and remaining an MP.

His declaration that he is "sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed" would seem to have taken him past the point of no return as far as his already slim hopes of resurrecting his ministerial career are concerned.

His behaviour had become increasingly erratic and self-destructive. That unpredictability helped to force Helen Clark's hand as much as the Holocaust reference.

It had become patently obvious the party has little control over the MP, who seems gripped by a political death-wish.

How else to explain his decision to return to the West Auckland winery where the now-infamous interview with Investigate's Ian Wishart took place in order to get statements from staff that no tape-recorder was on the table during the lunch.

That has backfired spectacularly on Mr Tamihere. It succeeded only in prompting an angry Wishart to release the Holocaust remarks, which he did not run in his original article, to the Herald on Sunday.

But at some point the PM was going to have to take off the kid gloves and start treating Mr Tamihere in the same fashion she would treat any other MP running a totally self-interested agenda.

She knew failing to bring him to heel risked leaving her open to the charge of operating double standards in her caucus, as well as appearing increasingly weak in the face of his damaging behaviour.

His remarks about the Holocaust were the last straw. The initial fuss created by his interview with Investigate was largely confined to his unveiling of the fun and games within the Labour Party and therefore relatively harmless. The latest outburst had Mr Tamihere entering a no-go zone where politicians simply do not tread.

He has so offended the Jewish community that Labour would have been left with no option but to censure him when he faced tomorrow's caucus meeting following his bout of forced leave last week.

By placing him on extended stress leave the Prime Minister has neatly avoided formal disciplinary action for now and, consequently, the possibility that the caucus meeting might have turned into an ugly showdown that had Mr Tamihere stomping out of the room, and possibly out of the party.

Whatever his colleagues now think of him, the last thing they want to do is to provoke him into resigning from Parliament before the election. That would mean either a messy byelection in a Maori seat or Helen Clark having to show her hand by naming the date of the general election.

Putting him on extended leave buys the Prime Minister time to determine just what kind of a political future Mr Tamihere has - if any.