Is Winston Peters becoming our Donald Trump?

What do you make of his latest comments? Peters always shoots from the hip and never more so than in an election year, but his comments are ill-informed, they're offensive and they're dangerous.

He's used the London terrorist attacks to have a crack at this country's Muslim community.

"It is we who must change, they say, not them..." says Peters.

"We must halt the slide and lead as a country before we in this country see a repeat of these attacks."

Peters is spring-boarding off the tragic situation in London and trying to spread fear.

It's what Donald Trump did so well. It's what led to his presidency.

Peters is inciting racial intolerance and fueling xenophobia in the same way Trump did, and in the same way that Nigel Farage did. And what did that trigger? It triggered Brexit and it delivered to the world a US president with little or no knowledge of diplomacy, democratic process or foreign policy.

And now Peters is doing the same. He’s alarmist. He’s chasing the headline. He’s playing on fear. He’s courting the easy vote, which is the aging white vote.

The one line that really stood out to me? It was this one.

He said we don't have to accommodate the cultural practises and traditions of others.

What a bigoted, xenophobic view. What is he arguing for? A country of clones?

He is our Donald Trump, our Nigel Farage, our Pauline Hanson.

A vote for him in this election is a vote for an old, bigoted view that should be locked away and hidden in the shameful shadows of New Zealand's past.

His idea of what New Zealand should look like is very different to the New Zealand that our children and grandchildren are growing up in. Thankfully.

And that he's used the London terrorist attack to urge New Zealand's Islamic community to 'clean its house' and start by looking at their own families. Well, that is abhorrent. It's political grandstanding of the worst kind, and at what cost to our society? It feeds intolerance. It feeds divisiveness. It feeds xenophobia and fear. It's straight from Donald Trump's "How to get people to vote for you" guide.

It is not our Muslim communities who threaten the fabric of New Zealand society. It is the bigoted views of Winston Peters and all those who follow him.