Source: Radio New Zealand
“The trend is not good” for the Prime Minister, says Liam Hehir. RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Last week was “disastrous” and a “last straw scenario” for the prime minister, says a former National Party chief press secretary, while another political commentator says National MPs will be considering whether now is the right time for a leadership tilt.
Janet Wilson was chief press secretary for both Todd Muller and Judith Collins and says a recent poll that put National in the 20s was not a “nail in the coffin” for Christopher Luxon.
But she says it encapsulates people’s view of him and the state of play for the National Party as a whole.
Liam Hehir says Luxon’s performance last week when it came to foreign policy did not matter as much as the poll, which reflects a broader trend for him, and “the trend is not good”.
Hehir says first term prime ministers normally get a free run in their first re-election bid, and Luxon is in a “very unusual position for a first term Prime Minister, coming under immense pressure”.
Luxon batted away questions last week about stepping down as party leader following the latest Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll that had National on 28.4 – down nearly 3 points from its poll last month.
Labour was up slightly on 34.4, while the Greens, ACT, and Te Pāti Maori were all up on 10.5, 7.5, and 3.2 respectively.
Luxon told Newstalk ZB on Friday evening none of his Cabinet colleagues had told him to reconsider his future, saying “all of them” back him.
He said he was “absolutely not” considering standing down and said he had the skills to lead the National Party and the country.
Luxon will make his regular media appearances on Monday morning, including on RNZ’s Morning Report, ahead of another week at Parliament that will see the National Party caucus get together on Tuesday for the first time since Friday’s horror poll.
Wilson told RNZ she thought Luxon had lost his messaging and status, “and I think he’s lost his imprimatur at this moment to be a leader”.
She said there were three likely scenarios that could play out this week, the first being what seemed to be occurring now – that Luxon had “dug in,” he would maintain business-as-usual and say he wasn’t going anywhere.
The second scenario was that his senior leadership team had asked him to consider his future, but he says he’s not going anywhere, “it’s a bit like scenario one: status quo is maintained.”
The third scenario, she said, was if Luxon told the senior leadership he wasn’t going anywhere, but the senior leadership team then decided it’s time for change.
She concluded the most likely probability was scenario one, “he is going to dig in and say, it’s only one poll – journalists, the commentariat, have gone mad.”
Hehir told RNZ every single MP in the National Party saw themselves as a potential leader.
“Whenever anyone’s under pressure, whenever the actual leader is under pressure, they will be wondering to themselves whether or not it’s the right time.
“You’d have to be crazy not to assume that in the wake of a series of pretty bad polls, that the ambitious people in the party aren’t considering their options.”
Wilson explained the effect on a caucus when polling was low was “severe,” that it was “horrific, actually”.
“What happens is MPs start doing the numbers, and they start looking at the likelihood of what their chances are for the upcoming election, and whether, in fact, their skin is going to be saved in the midst of the mayhem of what’s going on,” Wilson said.
She got a sense that was occurring right now.
“I think the more that the leader says, ‘there’s nothing to see here, it’s all fine’, the more it exacerbates the problem for those in the back bench.”
Wilson pointed out it was to Luxon’s advantage that a lot of his caucus were newer MPs, “the strategic art of politics is yet to occur to most of them”, though not all of them, she said.
She also referred to the previous political term, where National went through a succession of leaders, and the memory of that time had “frozen” the senior leadership.
“They’ve all been there before, so why would they want to go back to that necessarily?
“They’re aware of the risks. They’re not necessarily thinking about the rewards.”
If there was going to be a leadership challenge, Wilson said it would need to be “quick” and “clean”, and Luxon would need to “sit back.”
Hehir was skeptical about changing a leader in election year.
“It’s a bad idea to change leaders unless you’re absolutely certain that the new leader is going to keep all the votes you currently got and add additional votes.
“It’s the only way that it’s worth the instability, the permutations of a leadership change.”
The complications and difficulties being considered would be the pairing of a new leader and deputy leader, said Hehir.
With the National Party, he said, whenever the leadership is being considered, “you’re not just looking at the ideological factions, but you’re also going to look at the personalities involved.”
“If there was to be a leadership change, it would probably be a disaster unless everything lined up. And I’m just not sure that it does.
“The history of leadership changes in the National Party when they haven’t been managed, has not been good. Very rarely has it resulted in an election win or a changing of a course correction in terms of the overall trajectory.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
