KEY POINTS:
Winston Peters will be happy being the member-for-nowhere and leader of nothing. He shut himself away in room 222 at the end of election night with a sense of relief.
The media had just been dodged. The loyalist supporters downstairs thanked. The counter-intuitive gracious concession speech delivered.
He spoke as if it was over - as if there would be no comeback. And he looked relieved. He spoke gently, with no notes. There was no vitriol. He was pleased to be "free" - "free to live our own lives, without the enormous constraints there are in politics".
He spoke of "we", "us" and "ourselves" of NZ First rather than Winston Peters.
It was time for someone else to pick up the cudgels, he said. He spoke in the past tense of its having been a marvellous and fabulous experience.
The end had come at Tauranga's Armitage hotel, a venue so blatantly dated it was a cruel and lazy symbol of his demise.
He gave up on a small stage in the Washington room, another reminder of Mr Peters' better days as Foreign Minister. He then led the media on one last zig-zag to his retreat upstairs. And, as cheeky as ever, the smell of Mr Peters' first post-politics cigarette soon wafted out from under the door of the non-smoking room.
