RODNEY HIDE: Hipkins sets the bar, then trips over it

Another day, another Chris Hipkins fact check.

His complaint today (Friday) was that Māori MPs are held to a different standard. And that it was racist. "There is an element of racism in this as well that is just ugly," he said.

Different standard? Whose standard? His.

When Green and Māori Party candidates visited a Mongrel Mob pad, Mr Hipkins called it a "huge error of judgement". He ruled their MPs out of police, Corrections and justice in any government he leads. That was the bar.

Then footage turned up of his own Tāmaki Makaurau candidate, Kerrin Leoni, campaigning in a Labour jacket at an event with Mongrel Mob members.

On Thursday he defended her. By Friday she was gone. "It became very clear that her position was no longer tenable," he said.

Why? Because the footage "clearly violated the clear standards that we have set out for our Labour MPs and candidates".

The clear standards that we have set out. His words. Not the media's standard. Not National's. Not some racist double standard dreamt up by his opponents. His.

So the standard is his, he applied it, and she has resigned. Then, in the same breath, he says the standard is racist. You can't have it both ways. Or rather, Mr Hipkins can, but only for about a day at a time.

Now for the upside. And there is one, for Mr Hipkins.

Not long ago he was going to win back the Māori seats. Last December he said the Māori Party was not "worthy" of the vote. At Waitangi in February he said Labour would be "busy organising in the Māori seats to win them back".

Tāmaki Makaurau was the one he might actually have won. The Whakaata Māori Curia poll had the Māori Party's Oriini Kaipara on 33 percent and Ms Leoni right behind on 31. The Green, Florence Te Ōhaere, was on 21.

Not now. Ms Leoni's name stays on the ballot because nominations have closed, but Labour has no candidate. The seat is a shoo in for the Māori Party.

Here is the clever bit

Under MMP, Labour's number of MPs is set by its party vote. Lose an electorate and you simply get one more list MP. Labour's total does not change.

But the Māori Party is already likely to win more electorates than its party vote entitles it to. Every extra electorate it wins is overhang. Parliament gets bigger, and the extra seat goes to the centre left.

My own election model shows it neatly. With Tāmaki Makaurau going to the Māori Party, Labour stays on 34 seats either way. The Māori Party goes from four to five. Parliament grows from 123 to 124. That's a model, not a prediction, but arithmetic is arithmetic.

So Labour loses a candidate, keeps every MP, and the bloc it needs to govern gains one. Mr Hipkins promised to take those seats off the Māori Party. Now he is handing them over, and the overhang is his route to power.

He set the standard. He enforced it. He called it racist. And he may well be the one who profits from it.

That's quite a day's work.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader