Not everyone's a winner baby, that's the truth

Winston Peters

Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing was playing as Winston Peters slipped inside the Sulphur Pt Yacht Club from its private balcony, where he may or may not have been analysing the election over a cigarette.

"Is that the same speech he was giving before," he nodded at Don Brash on television.

"Hasn't he finished yet? Don's never won an election. He's got an unbroken record of never having won an election."

He didn't even wait to hear Helen Clark. The New Zealand First leader left in a private car with friends after spending only a couple of hours - and much of that hidden on the balcony - with his supporters which, for one family, now stretches across three generations.

He tried to see everyone. But he was hounded around the clubrooms by a mass of television cables that toppled chairs and came perilously close to entangling elderly and sometimes frail supporters, and he left.

That was, though, only after he had pressed New Zealand First's claim for relevancy.

"Who's got the balance of political responsibility here? Work that out for yourselves," he snapped at journalists he suspected could not count.

Still, he showed good grace for a politician who had lost his seat after 21 years and whose party, with seven MPs, cannot dominate Government-forming negotiations as it has in the past. "It's been the most amazing election," he greeted his subdued team at his Tauranga headquarters.

"I will just remind people that when we campaigned we said that we would put our support behind the party that got the most seats.

"Because we don't know what the outcome of the election is, I have got no intentions of speculating on what we might do, today, tomorrow ... until the final results are in."

And if he said it once, he said it a thousand times over the evening.

"Look at the figures." he advised those who did not seem to know.

When he arrived, it was all square. By the time he left, Labour.

And could there be a stable government involving however many minor parties and maybe the Greens?

"I guarantee it," he insisted, then less emphatically: "New Zealand First will guarantee it inasmuch as we've got a role to play."

His party would not oppose the next Government in confidence and money-supply votes, which does not mean it will necessarily support it. Abstention is on the cards.

And, in a cheeky aside: "Neither side can do it, oh dear, how sad."

Yesterday, Mr Peters was sticking to his word that he would keep his counsel for some days, until he had had time to meet colleagues about what the party should do.

He would not tell the Herald if he had spoken with either Helen Clark or Don Brash, or when he might, or what he thought was the "final" count of votes.

Then he added he had to go Dargaville for the funeral of a friend's mother who died at the end of the campaign.

"Look, I've got to get ready to go to a funeral. I've got plans to make."

He wasn't sure when he would be back in Tauranga.