KEY POINTS:
Just after 8am on Friday I got a hurried call from one of the Prime Minister's closest advisers. Did I have an Auckland number for Sir Robert Jones?
I did not but suggested he wait until 9am and call Bob's Wellington office to get the landline number for the cellphone-phobic Jones.
"I can't wait until 9am. It's urgent," he replied in a slightly embarrassed tone before hanging up.
I bet it was urgent.
A few minutes before, Bob Jones had been on National Radio calling Winston Peters "a liar", stating he had misled the House, one of the most heinous crimes in Parliament and a firing offence.
Helen Clark was due shortly to meet an unrepentant Peters in Auckland to ask him to stand aside as Foreign Minister. She clearly wanted all her ducks in a row because it would not be an easy discussion.
The Serious Fraud Office had announced it suspected there could be a "serious and complex fraud" involved in his New Zealand First party's financing and would investigate what happened with donations from Jones and the Vela family. It would not immediately investigate the Owen Glenn donation, or matters surrounding the Scampi inquiry, but left the door open to probe those issues if more evidence came out. Strike One against Peters.
Helen Clark had picked up that morning's Dominion Post to read a new accusation that Winston Peters had misled the House when, in 2006, he assured Parliament he had personally paid all his legal expenses in the Winebox inquiry. The paper revealed it had uncovered at least $24,000 in bills paid by the taxpayer through the Parliamentary Services organisation for Winebox-related legal work. Strike Two.
On her radio she heard Bob Jones deny a claim Peters had made in the House that Jones had seen the party's books and the matter of his misdirected $25,000 donation was "cleared up". An angry Jones insisted Peters had misled the House on that. Strike Three.
Add to that the festering embarrassment of the Privileges Committee hearings on the Owen Glenn donation and she had no choice but to cut Peters loose.
Meanwhile, that same morning, Winston was somewhere in Auckland in his ministerial limousine going stratospheric. For a man who has spent weeks dodging questions from the "meerkat" media he did something extraordinary. He rang Radio New Zealand and thundered he would convince Clark to keep him and "she will know these allegations are vile, malevolent, evil and wrong".
Down the years the Prime Minister has truly been the victim of vile, malevolent and malicious conspiracies spreading lies about her. She withstood those attacks honourably and with courage, secure in the knowledge she was an innocent party. If anyone could understand what he was going through she could.
Indeed, just 48 hours before she had attended a diplomatic function hosted in Wellington by Peters, to show her continued support for him.
However, it was spiralling out of control. It would be fair to argue, unlike Clark's problems with her Brethren persecutors, it was hubris bringing about Peters' fall.
His arrogance and cavalier approach to money were responsible for his demise.
The damage by association he was inflicting on the Labour-led Government and Clark's own reputation was unsustainable.
It was one of the hardest political decisions Clark would have to make.
If she forcibly removed Peters the upside would be that Labour could then distance itself from the mess he had created and concentrate on the upcoming election campaign.
The downside would be that Peters may well go feral at being sacked or stood aside.
He is great at playing the martyr. "See! They're all out to get me!" Portraying himself as an innocent victim, he will not hesitate to throw as much dirt at his former Labour allies as he can and after so long inside the Government he will have plenty of muck to hurl.
So far the participants he has identified in this "vile conspiracy" against him include me, the NZ Herald, the Dominion Post, TVNZ, TV3, Radio NZ, the Radio Network, the SFO, Act, National, and big business (except for those big businessmen who have funded him).
Although now, it seems, some of his donors such as Jones and Glenn, because they have contradicted him, may also be in the "vile conspiracy". Expect to add Labour to the list.
The SFO inquiry will take many months while the Privileges Committee hearing will probably be ineffectual because Parliament will soon close when Clark calls the election. In the vacuum Peters will take to the hustings, the wounded battler, rallying his troops against the forces of darkness that surround him.
It promises to be great theatre if nothing else.
