As the Iwi Chairs Forum fought fruitlessly to keep Te Pāti Māori together last week, spokesperson Bayden Barber offered a warning: a split tōtara is only good for the fire.

Now Te Pāti Māori finds itself in an inferno.

The slow-burn conflagration in Aotearoa New Zealand has been smouldering for so long, it’s easy to miss the magnitude. But this is no small matter.

• READ MORE: What happens next for Te Pāti Māori and expelled MPs Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Tākuta Ferris?
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This is a party ousting a third of its caucus, citing “irreconcilable differences” and “serious breaches” of its constitution.

Fronting reporters today, co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi wished their former colleagues “all the best of luck” and waved them on their way.

“We had to bring this to a close, and we must move on.”

But that seems overly hopeful. Both Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris were quick to declare the move “unconstitutional” and are threatening to challenge it “in all respects”.

Waka-jumping provision
The party’s National Council has also yet to consider whether to invoke the waka-jumping provision and eject the MPs from Parliament altogether.

That would require agreement of the two other remaining MPs — Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and Oriini Kaipara. It’s unclear yet where they stand in all this.

Either outcome is ugly. If the “rogue” MPs remain, they will serve as a constant reminder of division. If they are booted, two byelections loom, sure to be bitter and bruising.

At least a public contest might shed more clarity on what’s behind the weeks of infighting, with voters so far largely left in a cloud of smoke.

Asked to clarify on Monday exactly what the MPs had done to deserve expulsion, the co-leaders refused: “You’re not going to get that detail here in this press conference.”

From what has dripped out over the past six weeks, it seems the feud is driven more by personality than principle.

Party president John Tamihere has accused the two MPs of plotting a failed coup. Kapa-Kingi and Ferris have declared no confidence in Tamihere, with their supporters decrying toxic dictatorial leadership.

Past wave of unity
Supporters are right to feel aggrieved. A year ago, Te Pāti Māori was riding a wave of unity and purpose, as a driving force behind the historic Toitū Te Tiriti hikoi.

It boasted its largest-ever caucus, having swept six of the seven Māori electorates in a dominant 2023 result.

Ironically, the roots of the recent crisis lie in that rapid expansion.

The co-leaders went from being a dynamic duo to overseeing a more assertive caucus and competing egos.

Tamihere, Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi are all dominant personalities, used to steering their own course.

But both Kapa-Kingi and Ferris regard themselves as electorate MPs first, answerable to their own people, not to the central hierarchy.

Add in the whānau ties on either side, and the conflict shifts from political to personal.

Party’s brand damaged
The co-leaders admit the recent disunity has damaged the party’s brand. The enthusiasm of a year ago has turned to disillusionment, with voters now forced to pick sides or to look elsewhere.

When Hone Harawira split from the Māori Party in 2011 to form Mana, both sides eventually vanished. Harawira was sent packing by voters in 2014, and the rest of the Māori Party followed in 2017.

For the wider opposition, there is good and bad here.

The Labour Party will see an opportunity to win over those disenchanted voters and to retake the Māori electorates amidst a more divided race.

But the wider picture is riskier. Centrist voters may well look at the turmoil on the left and decide to stick with the status quo.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has yet to publicly declare whether he would welcome Te Pāti Māori as part of a future Cabinet.

Those questions will only grow louder now — expanding to include the “rogues”. Where do they stand in any coalition calculation?

The Iwi Chairs Forum had arranged “peace talks” this week, bringing together the two factions at a Wellington marae.

Bayden Barber still thinks that would be beneficial and the co-leaders agree it could still go ahead. But few expect much to come of it now.

The next moment of reckoning may come on December 7, when members gather in Rotorua for the party’s AGM — and confront how Te Pāti Māori can piece itself together from the ashes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

From winning a single-party majority in 2020, Labour’s vote has virtually halved in 2023 in the Aotearoa New Zealand general election.

Pre-election polls appear to have under-estimated support for National, which on the provisional results last night can form a government with ACT and will not need NZ First, despite those same polls pointing to a three-way split.

While the Greens and Te Pāti Māori both saw big gains, taking crucial electorate seats, it has been at the expense of Labour.

• READ MORE: NZ election 2023: National, ACT poised to form new government
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Special votes are yet to be counted, and Te Pāti Māori winning so many electorate seats will cause an “overhang”, increasing the size of Parliament and requiring a larger majority to govern.

There will also be a byelection in the Port Waikato electorate on November 25, which National is expected to win.

So the picture may change between now and November 3 when the official result is revealed.

But on last night’s count, the left bloc is out of power and the right is back.

Big shift in the Māori electorates
Te Pāti Māori has performed better than expected in the Māori electorates – taking down some titans of the Labour Party and winning four of the seven seats.

The party vote remained at 2.5 perecent — consistent with 2020.

One of the biggest upsets was 21-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke’s win over Labour stalwart Nanaia Mahuta in the Hauraki-Waikato electorate. Mahuta has represented the electorate since 2008 and has been in Parliament since 1996.

This was a must-win race for Mahuta, the current foreign affairs minister, after she announced she would not be running on the Labour party list.

Labour won all seven Māori seats in 2017 and six in 2020.

Advance voting
In 2017, 1.24 million votes were cast before election day, more than the previous two elections combined.

In 2020, this rose to 1.97 million people – an extremely high early vote figure attributable to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, more than 1.3 million New Zealanders cast advance votes before election day – higher than 2017 but significantly lower than 2020.

The comeback kid
After a dismal showing at the 2020 election, NZ First’s Winston Peters has yet again shown himself to be the comeback kid of New Zealand politics. Peters and his party have provisionally gained nearly 6.5 percent of the vote, giving them eight seats in Parliament.

On the current numbers, the National Party will not need NZ First to help form the government. But the result is still a massive reversal of fortune for Peters, who failed to meet the 5 percent threshold or win an electorate seat in 2020.

The heart of Wellington goes Green
Urban electorates in the capital Wellington have resoundingly shifted left, with wins for the Green Party’s Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central and Julie Anne Genter in Rongotai.

Chlöe Swarbrick has retained her seat in Auckland Central.

The Wellington electorates had previously been Labour strongholds. But the decision by outgoing Finance Minister Grant Robertson to compete as a list-only MP opened Wellington Central to Paul, currently a city councillor.

Genter takes the seat from outgoing Labour MP Paul Eagle.

Both Wellington electorates have also seen sizeable chunks of the party vote — 30 percent in Rongotai and almost 36 percent in Wellington Central — go to the Greens.

Debrin Foxcroft, deputy New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Finlay Macdonald, New Zealand editor, The Conversation; Matt Garrow, editorial web developer, The Conversation, and Veronika Meduna, science, health + environment New Zealand editor, The Conversation. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.