On the 21st of April, during a National party caucus meeting, Christopher Luxon initiated a vote of no confidence upon himself, a vote the National party leader and current prime minister survived. This comes after the 1News-Verian Poll placed the National party at just 30% and Luxon’s own personal favorability at 16%, 3% beneath Chris Hipkins. The results incited a resurgence in whispers of a potential mutiny of sorts against Luxon, especially following the cabinet reshuffle at the beginning of April which saw Chris Bishop unceremoniously dumped from the campaign chair position for National’s election campaign. Bishop had been loosely discussed as one of the prominent critics of Luxon’s leadership, though rather than admit party instability at the time, Luxon pointed to Bishop’s workload, but this line of reasoning very quickly disintegrated once it was pointed out that Simeon Brown – the new campaign chair – was carrying a similar workload, including the job of minister for health.
So the confidence vote, which saw Luxon keeping his position, seems to play two roles: To the public, it is an attempt to display coherent belief in the Prime Minister’s capabilities & shared commitments; To those within the caucus, it is a ‘I’m the boss’ move which seems to come straight from the CEO playbook Luxon would have put together during his time at Air New Zealand. Emerging from the caucus meeting, Luxon refused to take any questions, made a brief statement regarding the fuel situation, and left.
By the time you’re reading this, we’ll be about 5 months out from the election, and we’re seeing a lot of very fast-moving changes in the political environment as parties scramble into battle positions. The potshots being thrown from NZFirst at the FTA with India should serve as a reminder to Luxon that political coalitions can be uneasy, uncertain things.
