Barry Soper: Will there be an announcement from Winston Peters today?

There's nothing more frustrating for a political observer than reading tea leaves. Unfortunately we don't have much more to go on though with the ongoing gum beating between Winston Peters and National and Labour.

The caretaker Finance Minister Steven Joyce has made much of the fact that he's the Cabinet tea maker, again saying that's what he'd be doing yesterday, but if Bill English was anything to go by on his weekly media rounds the leaves aren't delivering much.

The tea clearly wasn't to his liking, English seemed a bit down in the mouth reminding Peters, as if he needs reminding, that with 56 seats compared to New Zealand First's nine, the weight of the negotiations favour National.

That sort of patronising power play won't impress Peters. If English really wants to continue in the Prime Minister's job, he's got to wash some humble pie down with his tea. A deal with National is much simpler to do than a deal with Labour and the Greens, English is at pains to point out which is again stating the bleedingly obvious that Peters doesn't need reminding of.

Other than that undiplomatic posturing, this contest is hard to read, unlike previous Government forming exercises involving Peters.

When he went with National, the party that expelled him just three years earlier, the first MMP deal was pretty easy to read after a conversation over lunch that sealed it for me. One of his old mates confided, during the prolonged negotiations, he wanted to be Treasurer, a title that was unheard of in New Zealand. Running into Michael Cullen in a parliamentary corridor a few hours later, the prospect was put to him, and without hesitation he said: "Over my dead body."

Then in 2005, the highly inflammatory one-rule-for-all speech delivered by Don Brash early in the year saw a Jacindamania effect which saw him picking up 21 seats more than Bill English could manage with his crashing defeat just three years before. But Helen had the edge by two seats over National, ironically now the same margin that National has over the Labour/Greens bloc.

Like now, National had no natural mates and Peters with just seven seats called the shots.

It was on this day 12 years ago that Peters signed on the dotted line with the Clark Government. So will there be a signing ceremony today, or at least an announcement?

The Labour caucus will be meeting, expectantly waiting for a knock on the door. National isn't calling its MPs together, no doubt waiting for a phone call.

But no one's holding their breath, especially if they value their health and their safety.