KEY POINTS:
The departure of Winston Peters, a relief as it is, does not mean he is gone entirely from our political life. Thanks to MMP he needs only 5 per cent of the electorate - one voter in 20 - to give New Zealand First their party vote at the coming election and he would return to Parliament.
Alternatively, a majority of the Tauranga electorate could make him their MP again.
After all that has been disclosed this year it seems unthinkable that anyone would still believe him worth their vote but he has had a following that seems impervious to political reasoning. They are older people mostly, on low fixed incomes, unsettled by social change and suspicious of minorities, migrants and trends they fear.
Mr Peters has exploited their fears and suspicions mercilessly, sometimes at the expense of minorities and careless of the damage done to this country's standing in migrants' homelands.
To supporting audiences Winston Peters liked to portray himself as lonely hero assailed on all sides by rich and powerful interests that he alone would expose and hold to account.
In recent weeks it is he who has been exposed as a recipient of money, a lot of money, from rich and powerful interests and he has resisted the sort of accountability he demands of others.
Some of the unexplained elements of fundraising by him or on his behalf raise very serious questions indeed. They are now the subject of Serious Fraud Office investigation, which he says he can satisfy.
If money paid to the mysterious Spencer Trust run by his brother went to party purposes and its handling meets the letter of the law, Mr Peters might have saved himself a great deal of trouble by explaining this long ago.
Likewise, the $100,000 given to his lawyer by Labour's leading benefactor Owen Glenn. Had Mr Peters bothered to check the facts with his lawyer, Brian Henry, before denying any donation from Mr Glenn, he would have saved himself embarrassment before Parliament's privileges committee.
But these are not incidental misjudgments on his part. They are completely in character, typical of the instinctively evasive style of politics he has always practised.
It seems he cannot help himself; faced with a reasonable question his response is invariably to bristle, bluff, dissemble, prevaricate and try to keep the media guessing.
It had the benefit of prolonging his moments in the limelight but it went deeper than attention-seeking behaviour.
It became an almost pathological aversion to candour, even when a simple explanation might have saved him further trouble.
He was forever promising to come clean tomorrow. Even the Prime Minister was unable to get a straightforward explanation of his Spencer Trust and had to be content with assurances he had done nothing illegal.
She has been more patient with him than with any minister of her own party but in the end Mr Peters is the author of his own demise.
The National Party has written him out of the script for post election negotiations. Even if he summons enough support to survive, National's John Key says he will not be acceptable in any ministry he might form. He has destroyed Mr Peters' political leverage at a stroke.
Soon it will be up to his previous voters. Have they seen through him at last? Or have the disclosures of the past few months gone completely over their heads, merely reinforcing his heroic pose for them? Probably the latter. Ever susceptible to his rhetoric, grooming and charm, they might forgive him anything.
But he would return for nothing. The last of his credibility has disappeared. So should he.
