ANI O'BRIEN: I changed my mind on Luxon

How Liam Hehir convinced me I was wrong

Yesterday in my weekly political wrap up I wrote:

Again we find ourselves with another lot of coup rumours. Yesterday, Luxon insisted repeatedly that he has the full support of his caucus. Sadly, the only time a leader has to say that is when he does not.

My assessment of things is that the end of the road is nigh for the Prime Minister. He can not continue fending off these attacks. And I no longer think he should. Leadership coups are messy and difficult to get right, but the polls are heading nowhere good and Luxon seems unwilling to do anything to correct his course. He chases votes he will never get while New Zealand First robs the nest where neglected and increasingly frustrated National voters languish.

We are finally at the point where virtually any combination of senior National MPs would present a more palatable option to the people of New Zealand than Christopher Luxon. He has the choice to continue to fight or put party and country first and fall on his sword. With Labour ahead in the polls on the back of doing absolutely nothing, it is clear that the electorate has rejected him. Time to resign, Prime Minister. And if he won’t, National needs to get brave and take him out.

Today I read this piece by Liam Hehir in The Blue Review. I highly recommend reading it.

Time to put up or shut up

There will always be MPs willing to destabilise their own party while lacking the courage to put their name to it. We have been watching them at work for months, and it is past time somebody said what most people in the National Party are already thinking…

Read more

Hehir’s piece was so persuasive I think it may have changed my mind. This article is an attempt to sort out my thoughts and I welcome discussion in the comments. Help me figure this out!

Changing one’s mind is not something people like to do these days, but I think it is an act of intellectually honesty so I am happy to admit when I have been persuaded. Hehir writes with a clarity that is hard to ignore and, importantly, this is not the work of a detached commentator taking cheap shots from the sidelines. It is written from the perspective of someone who understands the National Party from the inside, who is invested in its success, and who approaches the current turmoil as a conservative thinking long term rather than chasing the next headline. He strips away the theatrics and forces a more disciplined assessment of what is actually going on.

Yesterday, as I say, I was ready to call time on Christopher Luxon. The polls are not good, the narrative is terrible, and Luxon has spent far too much of his prime ministership reacting rather than leading. I argued that he can’t keep fending off internal attacks and that he shouldn’t. If your own caucus is leaking like a sieve and your opponents are gaining ground by doing very little, then the instinctive conclusion is that the leadership has failed and needs to change.

But that argument, while emotionally satisfying, was built on an assumption that treats New Zealand politics like a presidential system. It assumes that swapping the leader is a reset button; new face, new energy, new trajectory. Problem solved.

Hehir is right to point out that it’s not how this all works.

What he does, effectively and, frankly, uncomfortably, is drag the conversation back to the structural reality of MMP. We elect parties, and governments are formed by blocs. The relevant question is not whether Luxon is personally popular enough to win a hypothetical popularity contest. It is whether the centre-right bloc can still form a government and, right now, it can.

That doesn’t mean things are good. Obviously, they are not. It doesn’t mean Luxon is excelling. Obviously, he is not. But it does change the risk calculation because if the bloc remains viable, then rolling the leader in an election cycle is a massive gamble. And history suggests it is a bad one.

As Hehir reminds us, we have already run this experiment. In 2020, National convinced itself that changing leaders would change its fortunes and it did actually, but not in the direction they were hoping for. It created chaos, burned credibility, and delivered one of the worst results in the party’s history.

My mind is scrambled. As someone who wants to see the coalition returned to government, I am worried. The polls are tight and we are being served a news diet of constant derision for the coalition from a media eager to advance the coup narratives. I want something to change and I am frustrated by what I see and hear from Christopher Luxon.

However, as long as the centre-right bloc continues to poll above the chaotic alternative it doesn’t really matter. It is up to National to address the reasons the public are unhappy with them and it is up to them whether they attempt to staunch the bleed of voters flowing to New Zealand First. Given my personal priority is simply that the coalition is returned, not that National achieves the same number of seats, I should not be as worried about Luxon as I am.

So why am I fretting?

Well, I guess one part of it is that I do think there are others in the party that would do a better job as leader. But I thought that before he even became leader. I much preferred the prospect of a second go for Simon Bridges. I still think he would be an excellent National Prime Minister, but unfortunately he seems to be thriving in his post-politics career.

Another part is, despite my vocal cynicism about the media, I have allowed myself to get caught up in their frenzy. I know better, but it is hard to ignore the overwhelming enthusiasm the media have to take Luxon’s scalp. Hehir’s writing has been a wake up call for me. A reminder that this is a class of people who have hated the coalition since day dot. They badgered Luxon about his personal beliefs with a ferocity Hipkins and Ardern never experienced because they agree with the left-wing politicians and so consider them correct. They want to see the coalition crash and burn and that informs their approach.

Also contributing to my anxiety may be the fact that things are so tight in the polls. While the centre-right has been able to govern in almost all polls this year, the left-bloc is far too close for comfort. As I have stated before, Labour is playing the strategy of keeping their heads down and allowing the media to tear apart the government for them. They can sit on the sidelines and not produce any policy, sniping at everything the government is doing without presenting any alternative vision except “not like those guys”. They are also allowing some pretty nasty proxy influencers online do their dirty work in a way that the media would call “dirty politics” if it were on the right. This strategy is working for them marvellously. And the centre-right has not yet figured out how to best combat it.

Hehir is right that the chaos is being created also, or primarily, by a group of National MPs who are not happy. I worry now that I am being sucked into the idea that the dissatisfaction is more widespread than it actually is. Another National member opined to me that it is frustrating to see some of the same MPs who took down Bridges and undermined Judith Collins agitating against another leader. They view it as a group of ambitious MPs on the liberal end of the party perpetually causing a bother. I am not sure that I agree entirely, but there are certainly some patterns there.

So now I ask myself what exactly is the upside of rolling Luxon now?

The reality (one that is acknowledged even by those fuelling the speculation) is that there is no obvious successor waiting in the wings. No one has been willing to take the leap and stick their neck out. There is no John Key figure, nor any candidate with a clear, demonstrable ability to improve National’s position in the short term. A different leader would inherit the same problems, the same constraints, and a caucus that has just demonstrated its willingness to destabilise its own government.

Given external forces are a significant part of the problem, there is unlikely to be much of a sugar hit from changing leader. The media may be marginally more friendly to liberals like Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis, and Erica Stanford, but the moment one of their bums hits the seat behind the desk on the ninth floor that would come to a screeching halt. They would be subject to the same constant agenda driven reporting and they would become the latest filthy, evil tory to be torn down. This is not to say they couldn’t cope necessarily, but rather to point out that they would be subject to the same handicaps Luxon has to contend with.

All of this does not absolve Luxon from the very dire need to make changes in his approach. He needs to tough up with his caucus to their faces and not simply hide from difficult conversations. If he is to survive he needs to make it clear that leakers and agitators are a threat to the future of their party and government. Then he needs real consequences. The friendly CEO needs to get tough and stop accepting undermining behaviour that is dragging National down.

He also needs to start listening to advice from people who know what they are talking about. His posse of twenty-something year old guys with barely any life experience are not appropriate sounding boards. It still astounds me to see one particular advisor always in his vicinity. The guy has the gift of the gab and is a natural salesman, but he has the political instincts of a goldfish and the confidence of a ground announcer at a sports match. “Yes Men” might make Luxon feel good, but what he really needs is uncomfortable truths.

He needs to start listening to his voters. The ones he has, not the one’s he wishes he had. The pilates mums of Amanda Luxon’s social class are more likely to vote left while their husbands vote right. This bears out in statistics. Of course, National needs to have broad appeal, but right now they are losing more support to New Zealand First than Labour. He needs to ask what issues and narratives are causing that.

He needs to get over his fear of anything remotely to do with race politics and start confronting the issues that he actually promised to be strong on at the last election. Decisive action in dealing with the erosion of accountable democracy in local government would be a great place to start. Pick up Act’s member’s bill as a government bill and fix the legislation. Stop sitting on the Treaty clauses review and Waitangi Tribunal report too.

The saying goes that “it’s the economy, stupid”. And it is true. Cost of living has always been the key to winning elections, but we are now in a world where the New Zealand economy is being battered around by circumstances largely outside of the government’s control. They could definitely rein in spending and whip the public service into shape, but they are mostly having to react to international factors. In this context, they need to do more in other areas to show impact. They need to fight the “culture wars” because many New Zealanders, especially ones more likely to vote for coalition parties are worried about culture. This is a contentious idea, I realise.

We all know Luxon’s instincts are those of a corporate operator, but he is in a political environment that rewards narrative dominance and emotional connection. He has not consistently shown the ability to seize a moment, define a debate, or cut through in the way voters expect from a Prime Minister. Even at a more granular level, the missteps in tone, whether in messaging or social media, have reinforced a perception of a leader slightly out of sync with the role he occupies and with the public.

But what Hehir’s piece forced me to confront is that responding by agitating for a coup may be doing more damage than the weaknesses themselves. The constant background briefing, the anonymous dissatisfaction, the drip-feed of “something’s about to happen” stories don’t just reflect instability, they create it. This hands ammunition to the man who was Police Minister in the term where crime skyrocketed, Health/Covid Minister when Labour decided to try to reform the health system in the midst of a pandemic, and the Education Minister who oversaw the collapse in literacy and numeracy and a truancy boom.

So I guess at this point, the issue is more about National’s behaviour. A party that cannot align behind its leader, cannot be disciplined, and is destabilising itself better than the Opposition could dream, is going to struggle regardless of who sits at the top. Swap the leader without fixing that culture and you risk proving the point in the most painful way possible that entrenched problems don’t leave with the leader.

I understand why some MPs are frustrated. It is totally understandable for those in unsafe seats or on the list to be very nervous. But they need to decide what is best for the party and the prospects of this coalition winning the election. Frankly, they need to shit or get off the pot. This cycle of drama is tedious and will result in more lost votes. Either rip the bandaid off and deal with the consequences or fully commit to getting behind Luxon for the good of the party.

That is where my thinking has landed…for now. I have been persuaded by Liam Hehir that removing Luxon now is likely to improve very little. In fact, it is more likely to make things worse. This is far from a ringing endorsement of the status quo. But, it is an acknowledgment of the constraints of the system we operate in. Under MMP, leadership is about coalition management, bloc stability, and electoral arithmetic. Luxon, for all his flaws, has already demonstrated that he can form and hold together a government in a complex coalition environment.

This is not a full reversal of what I wrote yesterday. Luxon should not get a free pass. He needs to improve, substantially. But I have been convinced that the idea that the answer is to remove him in the middle of an election cycle, without a clear successor or a compelling strategic rationale, is an idea driven by panic. And panic, in politics, is rarely rewarded.

Ani O'Brien writes at Thought Crimes