John Armstrong: Winston's pride costs party dearly

They don't serve humble pie at the Green Parrot.

Even if they did, you would be hard-pressed to get Winston Peters to swallow a slice the next time he dines at the late-night Wellington eatery.

Yesterday's concession that he will have something to say before the election about how New Zealand First will conduct coalition talks afterwards will have been difficult enough for him to digest.

Mr Peters made a major mistake in thinking that when it came to post-election intentions he could repeat the guessing game of 1996, the only other MMP election where NZ First's stance on coalition has mattered.

It has cost NZ First dearly. Not only did voters want more certainty about his intentions this time, the struggle between Labour and National is polarising voters. So when Labour sympathisers who had drifted to NZ First got the impression he would go with National, they fled straight back to Labour.

Just how much certainty voters will actually now get from Mr Peters is still a moot point.

When he said yesterday that nobody would be in any doubt about NZ First's position, he was not talking about coalition preferences.

He is more likely to say his party will not be part of the next government. NZ First will instead sit outside the government on Parliament's cross-benches, bartering support in exchange for a list of policy concessions from the governing party, Labour or National.

Mr Peters could have saved himself a lot of trouble had he declared NZ First would open post-election negotiations with the party which wins the most seats.

That is Peter Dunne's approach. Despite that solution offering an obvious escape clause, Mr Peters has refused point-blank to contemplate it.

Had he done so, he would have had a ready reply to the questions plaguing him.

But he held off neutralising the source of the self-inflicted damage, partly out of stubbornness and partly because he must be somewhat crest-fallen that, after nearly breaking free of its minor party status, NZ First has been put firmly back in its place.

He was also gambling that support for National would tail off and NZ First would bounce back to near the 10-12 per cent mark it was registering in the polls a couple of months ago, thus easing the pressure on him to express a preference.

The question now is: has he left things too late? With little more than two weeks to polling day, the Labour-National struggle just keeps intensifying, squashing the minor parties in the process.