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The anti-Luxonites’ preferred solution, that the prime minister voluntarily steps aside, runs into one obvious problem: he doesn’t want to.

The Bulletinabout 10 hours ago

Luxon’s most difficult fortnight has begun

Contributing writer
A bald man in a blue suit gestures by plugging his ears with his fingers while speaking into a microphone. The background is bright yellow, with a vertical blue banner reading "The Bulletin" on the right.
The anti-Luxonites’ preferred solution, that the prime minister voluntarily steps aside, runs into one obvious problem: he doesn’t want to.
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Another bad poll result confirms National’s slide – but does anyone in caucus have the stomach to do something about it, asks Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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Another rough poll

The 1News Verian poll political observers had been bracing for landed on Sunday, and the news is grim for the governing parties. National sits at 29.7%, rounded to 30% in 1News’s reporting. As Stuff’s Glenn McConnell reports, the coalition parties combined hold just 47% of the vote, against 50% for the opposition; if replicated at an election, a Labour-led government would have the numbers to govern. Christopher Luxon’s preferred prime minister rating dropped four points to 16%. NZ First sits at 10% in this poll, as opposed to 15% in a Talbot Mills corporate poll released on Friday – a discrepancy that matters, since National has been relying on NZ First’s numbers to pull the coalition over the finish line.

Luxon’s denials

Parliament returns today for a two-week sitting block that multiple commentators have identified as the crunch point for Luxon’s leadership. The weekend’s political talk has been dominated by Thomas Coughlan’s Herald scoop on Friday: he reported that in the week before Easter, party whip Stuart Smith tried and failed to reach Luxon to present evidence of caucus discontent with his leadership.

At a press conference later that day, Luxon denied it: “That’s just wrong. I was with Stuart Smith all of Tuesday in North Canterbury.” Coughlan’s story acknowledged the Tuesday visit but was about events the week before. A well-placed Beehive source confirmed to RNZ’s Jo Moir that Smith did try to speak to Luxon about caucus concerns – yet on Friday he and his office both denied it. Luxon’s additional claim, that he was “confident I have the numbers”, also backfired, Moir argues. “[Boldly] stating he has the numbers sounds like a line out of the loosey-goosey Luxon scriptbook”, she writes, since it “immediately suggests some of his caucus don’t support him as leader”.

Why no one will pull the trigger

Frustration with Luxon’s performance pervades the National caucus, Toby Manhire writes in The Spinoff this morning. “Ministers are frustrated by his insouciance, a perceived unwillingness to listen to advice, a disinclination to get his head around the detail on any given issue, and the resultant struggle to make a coherent argument beyond superficial talking points. For unhappy backbenchers, it’s a bit of that, and the visceral, swelling panic of imminent unemployment.”​

And yet a formal challenge remains unlikely. As Coughlan writes in a separate piece, Luxon and his detractors are locked in a “staring contest, with neither having the numbers to move decisively”. There may be a majority for change in caucus, but no majority for any one replacement, suggesting a bloody leadership contest that would hurt whoever won it.

But the anti-Luxonites’ preferred solution, that he voluntarily steps aside, runs into one obvious problem. Newsroom’s Marc Daalder writes that Luxon is “supremely confident” and has reportedly stopped reading focus group reports because they reflect criticism of him which he doesn’t believe (a claim Luxon has denied). “Nobody wants blood to spill”, one National MP told TVNZ’s Tova O’Brien. “Anything other than him stepping down would be a nightmare and he knows that.” The trouble is, he probably won’t.

Even a new leader may not save them

Zoom out, and the picture becomes even more complicated. Daalder argues that New Zealand politics has undergone a structural change that may make the whole debate academic: where both Labour and National could once expect to win an election with over 40% of the vote, and lose one with more than 30%, their combined vote share has been capped at around 65% since 2023, with no sign of that shifting. “Without some sort of political circuitbreaker, even a more successful National Party leader could only hope to scrape a few points back from Labour,” Daalder writes. “Perhaps the PM’s saving grace will come in the understanding that while others could do a little better, there’s no obvious candidate who would do a lot better.”