National Party MPs will have one question as they head to an urgent caucus meeting about Christopher Luxon’s leadership today: is rolling a sitting prime minister really a viable option three months out from the election?
This scene is starting to feel like déjà vu. The setting: the National Party caucus room. The players: agitated MPs of whom some, if reports are to be believed, are disappointed in their leader. The likely plot: a confidence vote as to whether our prime minister should continue to lead. If this all sounds a little too familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before.
Not since the days of Jim Bolger has a sitting prime minister been followed so relentlessly by coup rumours. This latest episode follows a gaffe-filled week last week, when National MPs were blindsided by Christopher Luxon’s surprise MMP announcement. It doesn’t help that polling continues to show uninspiring numbers for National.
Now, less than three months out from the election, National MPs are about to head into an urgent caucus meeting in Wellington, called by Luxon after dissatisfaction within National was reported by the NZ Herald on Monday night. It’s the third times coup rumours have swirled around the prime minister since late 2025.
Political commentator Jacqui van der Kaay thinks the question at the front of their minds as they go into the 9.30am meeting will be: “Is the risk of keeping him here greater than the risk of changing now?” On the one hand, she says, they have the opportunity to “energise voters” by forming a new united front around a fresh leader. On the other hand, they will know that you can never really predict how the electorate will react to a new leader. “Voters might also not like [a change], because you’re not showing clear leadership by unseating a sitting prime minister a few months before the election.”
Whatever they decide, Van der Kaay says, being in this position will be “frustrating” for the party, given it is happening because of Luxon’s unclear messaging, gaffes and apologies. The party also needs to consider how coalition partners Act and NZ First would react to a new leader, she says. “The reality is, if it’s going to happen, it has to happen soon. You either need to call it, or say this is it: he’s taking us to the election.”
Claudette Hauiti, a former National MP and political reporter says the right time to roll Luxon was yesterday. Hauiti served as an MP for a year in the 2013/14 Key government, and says that era of the National Party was led by a prime minister who “listened to his troops and his advisors”. The difference with this National caucus is that “Christopher Luxon is a leader that listens to no one,” she says. “I’d get rid of him now, but it comes down to who’s willing to put their hand up. Are they a good leader, and does the caucus have enough balls to back a new leader?”
Holly Bennett, the managing director of government relations firm Awhi, says the real question for the National caucus is whether they are “happy with less than stellar voting results” which would only see them “hobble through” to a second term in power. She says that current polling suggests the party won’t go into the election with full confidence “in any way, shape or form”.
Bennett warns that it’s not just the party who will be struggling with Luxon’s performance – traditional National voters would have been “really disappointed” to hear him “talk about business leaders with almost disdain” at a now infamous event in Rotorua 12 days ago. “When I look at some of their most recent policies, they’re not the National Party policies that I’ve come to know,” Bennett says. “Compulsory KiwiSaver is something that troubles me no end, because compulsion is never something the National Party has done.”
Bennett believes National should roll Luxon and replace him with a leader who could “stand up for” the party’s “fundamental values” in the future. She says the sooner they do it, the better.
David Cormack, a public relations expert and former Green Party staffer, disagrees. Change the leadership and you risk rocking the coalition, he says. If NZ First leader Winston Peters “pulls the pin” on the coalition “that would take a whole lot of oxygen” away from a new leader who may never become prime minister. National is likely still scarred by the “English-Bridges-Muller-Collins disaster”, Cormack says (throwing back to the party’s nightmare years of fast-changing leadership before Luxon stepped in) and worried that “any kind of change is going to relitigate” that era.
There will be tension between those on the backbenches whose jobs are on the line at current polling, and those within the kitchen cabinet with safer futures. “The backbenchers have been agitating for quite some time, because a number of them are going, ‘fuck, I’m going to lose my job and this guy sucks’,” Cormack says. His take on the frontbenchers’ feelings? “My job’s alright, but this guy sucks.”
Cormack says if the party plans to roll Luxon it better have a good replacement who will appeal to the public. Commentators are focused on Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop, but Nicola Willis, Chris Penk, Mark Mitchell and Simeon Brown have also been mentioned in the mix. Cormack’s pick? Stanford. She has a few things going for her, he says. She’s Auckland-based, so will be seen as in touch with the country’s largest city, liberal and a woman. At the 2023 election, the typical swing voter was a middle-aged Pākehā woman, and they may respond to Stanford, he thinks.
For the next few hours at least, Luxon remains the leader. After that? Well, stay tuned.
