For the third Friday in a row tears have been shed as the nation mourns a crime than still amazes us happened here. The last fortnight has been incredible with each day packed with more and more to digest. The pace has been hectic. Of course we’ve seen that pace affect Winston Peters. It’s also an incredible feat of emotional endurance by our Prime Minister.

But the people I most want to reach out to today are our police force. My producer and I are hearing stories of how this fortnight has stretched our officers and their families. From that first moment a fortnight ago the pressure was on and it would have been the hardest hour of the involved police’s life ever.

What then happened was the largest police investigation in New Zealand’s history with 500 officers on the case. Police were flown into Christchurch from around the country. Plans were scrapped, families left behind.

The security now required nationwide is also taxing on time, energy and capacity. So much so that many of the gatherings in towns to watch this morning’s Remembrance Service had to be cancelled.

We’re hearing of eight day weeks, long hard days fully armed guarding the nation’s mosques. They’re working their butts off.

This week we’ve also heard criticism of the police response from anti-terrorist experts from Australia which I felt was unwelcome. But pile that onto any guilt or sorrow the force is already feeling about that evil day and you know our thin blue line is being stretched. And yet they have responded day after day after day. 

To our police, I say thank you. Stay strong. It is appreciated.

And I have to say something about Brexit. We now wait for a vote tomorrow on what is known as MV 3, the third modified version of the Theresa May deal, after the speaker finally allowed it through. PM May sweetened the deal for her parliament by offering to resign if the deal is approved, stepping aside to allow someone else to see it through to the end.

Because of this sacrificial move the most stringent critics have indicated they may fall in behind the deal. World champion hypocrites like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg who have previously described the deal as plunging the UK into slavery are suddenly saying they’ll vote for it.

The personal ambition is breathtaking and obvious. All these Brexiteers want to do is vote for cat vomit, watch May resign, stage their own coup and then tear the whole thing up. And this is what has coloured the whole sad affair. It’s a political parlour game played out in fantasy land by players only interested in their own power and not their country’s wellbeing.

Meanwhile out in the real world, faced with such uncertainty, businesses and factories are abandoning the UK like rats from a sinking ship. The Brexiteers may indeed win the battle only to find the war has been lost and they’ve inherited a shattered and divided land.