Hone Harawira will contest the next election. He is back and he will stand – and he says the Mana Party is back too.

He was speaking on The Hui at the weekend and he said he would stand in Te Tai Tokerau against Labour’s Kelvin Davis. You may remember Harawira lost to Davis in 2014 by fewer than 1000 votes. He'd held that seat since 2005.

Harawira has been critical of the Maori Party and he has been critical of Labour, accusing both parties of failing Maori. Andrew Little hit back at him and said Hone Harawira has – and quote – made some spectacular political misjudgments. And he has. Quite a few. But then, well, Labour’s made a quite few of its own as well. Name a party that hasn't.

Harawira’s most spectacular mistake was to team up with Kim Dotcom. Why did he do it? Easy. He was lured by the money and the prospect of finally being in position to fund an election campaign.

Unlike National, Harawira can’t arrange fundraising dinners at Antoine's that generate thousands and thousands of dollars. He can’t rely on big donations. The electorate that Harawira represents is our poorest. Much of the far north is poverty-stricken.

And so I understand why he teamed up with the Internet Party. It was a financial decision. He was given the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of the country campaigning, and so when the internet party dangled the carrot, he grabbed it.

Was it foolish? Yes.

Was it career-ending? Well, we'll see. Harawira faces quite a challenge to unseat Kelvin Davis and win back the trust of that electorate.

What do I think? I like Harawira as a politician. I always have. And I like him because I think he's motivated for the right reasons. He is in politics because one way or the other, he believes he can bring about change for those he represents - and in a way he's not dissimilar to Winston Peters.

Like Peters, Harawira is always challenging the government of the day. He's always holding it to account. It's just that Peters wears a suit and has all the charm of a wiley old crocodile. Harawira is a firebrand. There are no smooth edges to him. If Peters is smooth, Harawira is serrated.

And Harawira is easy to provoke. In a country where we've moved towards shock jock journalism, he's a dream interviewee. Journalists and hosts prod and provoke Harawira and wind him up and then -- boom, he'll react. And that's the four second soundbite you'll see on the 6 o’clock news that night.

But get him on his own, away from the microphones and spend time talking to him about the extreme challenges people are facing in the far north, talk to him about child poverty, the impact of urbanisation on Maori -- and he is intelligent and insightful. Gentlemanly, even.

That said, he has an incredibly tough journey ahead of him to rebuild his credibility. I don't know if he can resurrect any support, any loyalty, any political following at all after the the Kim Dotcom catastrophe. Only the people of his electorate will determine that.

But love Harawira or loathe him -- and I suspect many of you will be in the latter came -- Harawira is real. What you see is what you get. And in a political world of spin where politicians churn out party line after party line, then a bit of 'realness', I think, is a welcome addition to our political landscape.