Details have emerged of yesterday’s preliminary coalition meeting between National and New Zealand First, with confirmed reports that Winston Peters did not utter a word during the thirty minute meeting, to which he arrived late.

As Prime Minister Bill English – accompanied by Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce – sat in silence, waiting for Peters to open negotiations, he instead slowly rifled through several draws in the room, looking for an object that turned out to be a small box cutter.

Peters is said to have extended the box cutter, and silently circled the National negotiating team, as English awkwardly pleaded with him.

“Look, ultimately, you have to ask yourself – uh, you, uh, you have to ask yourself,” English stammered, recoiling as Peters moved nearer. “You have to ask, do I really want – I mean, what you want is strong, s-stable…”

The negotiating team went increasingly silent as Peters donned a pair of black overalls, before suddenly and violently slitting the throat of his own chief of staff, David Broome.

Peters reportedly opened Broome’s gaping wound to spray blood in the direction of National’s team, staining their clothes and sprinkling their faces.

The New Zealand First leader and Kingmaker then quietly put his pinstripe suit back on, and headed for the exit.

“See you on Saturday,” he said, finally grinning and letting out a hearty, Winstonian laugh.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern’s meeting with Peters went substantially better, after Peters did not show up at all.

The meeting lasted 27 minutes.

“Yeah, good,” she told media, when asked how the sit-down had gone. “Oh, look, obviously, yes, we would’ve liked him to be there, but I greatly enjoyed it, yeah.”