Christopher Luxon’s decision to replace Chris Bishop as campaign chair with Simeon Brown augurs a different sort of approach. But whether it helps him reach the voters he’s really struggling with is another matter, writes Toby Manhire.

It’s a strange old cabinet reshuffle when the most striking bit of reshuffling doesn’t involve the cabinet at all. “Guys, I think you’re really overthinking this,” bristled Christopher Luxon when his decision to remove Chris Bishop as National campaign chair prompted a flurry of questions around whether this was a response to whispers late last year of a challenge to his leadership, but it does bear a good bit of thinking. 

The rationale, said Luxon with studied bewilderment, is straightforward. Workload. Bishop’s plate, stacked already with transport, housing, infrastructure and the RMA colossus, had been topped further with the office of attorney-general. He had to lose something, guys, and that turned out to be leader of the house and party campaign chair. 

Without a doubt, Bishop is ferociously busy. But the workload argument strains when you consider the new wearer of the campaign chair sash. Simeon Brown remains as minister of health, in charge of an issue New Zealanders rank second only to cost of living as their biggest concern, and he takes back energy from Simon Watts (farewell to the most aptly named energy minister since Phil Heatley), a portfolio in which there’s a bit happening just at the minute. 

Then there’s the timing. Less than six months till parliament dissolves and campaigning goes full-throttle is a curious moment to swap out the chair of that campaign. Asked why it hadn’t been done earlier, Luxon said: “We have a series of campaign – I’m very proud of our campaign, from a party point of view, proud of the party, proud of the way we’ve organised our campaign. You saw us do that in 2023, from 2020 to 23, and we’ve been doing it the same since then.” Try overthinking that. 

Luxon’s changing of the guard, which reportedly left a hot, cross Bishop on the eve of Easter, may be less about Bishop having too much to do and more about him being too integral. As campaign chair he was architect of election strategy; as leader of the house he was foreman of the site. Those two roles amounted to a channel through which just about all National political activity must travel – the Strait of Bishop, perhaps. As of today, he has neither.

The elevation of Simeon Brown is just as remarkable. The unwavering loyalty helps, but it’s more than that. Brown, who celebrates his 35th birthday tomorrow, is the undisputed wunderkind of the Luxon government. Elected in Pakuranga at just 26, he has been trusted by Luxon in portfolios including health, energy, SOEs, transport, local government and Auckland issues. Returned to energy at a time when the nation is becoming increasingly preoccupied by the progress of oil tankers across the Pacific Ocean, Brown installs kitchen-cabinet presence in a portfolio alongside an associate minister twice his age and with 35 times his flamboyance, Shane Jones. 

But the greatest assertion of authority from Luxon is in replacing Bishop as campaign chair. The chair is like the conductor of the orchestra, according to Steven Joyce, who waved the baton at the National Party symphony across five elections. Brown, like Bishop, has a very sharp political mind. In other ways, he could not be more different. Bishop sits at the most socially liberal point in the National spectrum, Brown at its most conservative. He voted against the decriminalisation of abortion, for example, and against the ban on conversion therapy. Brown goes for Schubert, Bishop for Shihad.

It could be that Luxon has watched the New Zealand First and Act parties gobble up chunks of National’s support since 2023 and wants Brown to run a campaign that gobbles them back. He’ll have a greater appetite for dabbling in the culture wars. And he lives in Auckland, ear to the ground in the critical battleground for the 2026 election. 

Luxon and Brown were instrumental, alongside David Seymour, in forcing Bishop to retreat on density rules for Auckland not once, but twice. You can only imagine the way Brown might flinch at Bishop’s public remarks that it’s been good for the country for house prices to fall. That position might be consistent with Luxon’s exhortation to avoid “repeating the sugar-rush economics of the past”. But for many in National, house prices going up, and talking them up wherever possible, is seen as a necessity for electoral success. 

Whether Bishop’s relegation within the National engine room makes him more or less inclined to ponder a leadership challenge is another matter. He still has a formidable workload, as Luxon was so keen to point out, to which is now added the punctilious responsibilities of attorney-general. I’m reminded – and I admit this may be overthinking it a bit – of Jenny Shipley, who told us in an interview for the Juggernaut podcast that she was burdened with a huge amount of ministerial responsibility by Jim Bolger, prompting many to wonder whether that was designed to leave her too busy to mount a challenge. We all know what happened there. 

It’s hard to imagine New Zealanders looking kindly on internal bloodletting when we could be facing an energy crisis. And yet National’s dismal polling under Luxon carries an extra punch for Bishop. On the current numbers, he faces a mightily tall order to retain the swing seat of Hutt South. Absent a big shift in fortune, and with list seats hen’s teeth, he could be out of parliament altogether. 

As long as Luxon remains unshuffled as chief executive minister, of course, the most important part of any campaign is him. “In the modern age, a time-poor public puts more and more emphasis on the leader of each team,” Steven Joyce wrote after another orchestrating another triumph for “Team Key” in 2014. “Modern political campaigns simply reflect that reality.”

With that in mind, for Luxon, Brown and anyone involved in National Party strategy ahead of November 7, a more pressing challenge than winning back voters that have strayed to their coalition partners is getting women back on side. According to the latest survey by Roy Morgan – the only pollster that routinely publishes demographic breakdowns – National support among women aged 18-49 is just 13.5%. By this measure, not even one in seven female voters under 50 would vote blue.

Nicola Willis didn’t figure in the reshuffle announcement last week, and has hardly featured in speculation around the next leader of the National Party – the thinking being that she has become welded in the public mind to the economic melancholy of the last two years. Cometh the crisis, however. If you’d woken from a coma in the last four weeks you might think the new prime minister, Nicola Willis, was doing a good job. 

With a couple of big polls a few days away, might that performance be reflected in a bump for Willis? Across the last year she has scored somewhere between 0.1% and 1% in the Verian poll for 1News. Even a modest boost in that result could send a powerful message.