PETER WILLIAMS: National's Bad (Really Bad) Day

The PM survives another bungled coup

The National Party is a shambles with a leader and senior MPs whose egos matter more than the good of the country.

That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from the disaster that unfolded in Wellington on Wednesday, August 12.

Christopher Luxon is a poorly performing Prime Minister. The first time I saw him appearing in public was at a public meeting in Wanaka in the winter of 2023, probably about four months before the election. It was highly likely then that he would be Prime Minister before the end of the year.

Yet his speech that night was less than memorable, infused with cliché and lacking any inspiration or specific ideas about the country’s future beyond the slogans.

The first question from the floor came from former finance minister Ruth Richardson, who’s had a holiday home in Wanaka for years. She put it to him bluntly. “What are the most important things you’ll do in your first 100 days in office?”

He was completely flustered. He didn’t have a clue. He had no specifics. He was completely unprepared for a basic question.

I came away that night thinking this guy might have been a CEO of Air New Zealand but he seems incapable of connecting with an audience.

Nothing much has changed in three years. Poor Rachel Smalley, if she’s still on the payroll, must be tearing her blonde hair out. Brought on board to improve his public persona and make his communications more impactful and precise, she must wonder what kind of politician she’s dealing with when he has brain farts like the comments on small business, MMP and the Opportunity Party.

When he told a post cabinet press conference last year that there was “nothing at all” he liked about the Treaty Principles Bill then his caucus colleagues and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders must have wondered what is he thinking?

A Bill which wanted to legislate equality for all New Zealanders was just dismissed out of hand by the Prime Minister. Seriously?

That’s all history now. But he’s also proved he has an extraordinary ego too. One of the more cutting lines about him that I’ve read is that when he steps into a room he automatically believes he’s the smartest person in it.

That ego has allowed him to twice stare down his caucus and retain the top job. But the damage is done. National can’t beat Labour in the election and if we want the right of centre coalition to form another government then we have to hope like hell that Act and New Zealand First can somehow lift their numbers by November 7.

Act, according to the latest 1News poll are heading in the right direction, but New Zealand First is sadly going the other way thanks to silly policy like buying a bank and a rugby team, and needless insults of a Chinese born MP.

The National caucus must take a huge share of the blame for this fiasco too. If Chris Penk was doing the numbers could he not count? Or was he calling around to see what kind of appetite there was for a change in leader and one of the recipients of his call leaked to the New Zealand Herald? The move against Luxon became public and the leader stared down the dissenters with the Wednesday morning caucus meeting.

Either way it was another inept move by those who wanted to see Luxon go. If the egos of Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop could not allow one or the other to be the main contender for the top job then they are just as much to blame.

The party has lost a strong political talent in Chris Penk. Being cut from his portfolios was expected after he was outed as the first mover in the coup but he would be expected to be reappointed to cabinet under a new leader in future.

Now by resigning as an MP as well, it means another distraction while a new candidate is selected in Kaipara ki Mahurangi.

Maybe Nicola Willis could relocate from Karori?

After this fiasco the chances of her making it back as a list MP have seriously deteriorated. National currently have 44 electorate MPs. The 1News poll had them on 29 percent which means only 35 seats, all of which could be electorate members.

National’s polling is likely to only go further south in the next three months thanks to this leadership bungle.

Worst of all, the redistributive Marxists of Opportunity are now firm favorites to be in the next parliament, polling at 8 percent for the second time in two weeks. That shows you how terrible policy can be so well politically managed that voters are conned.

It’s painfully obvious what has happened in the last few weeks. Urban liberals, those who believe in the transgender fairy, treaty partnership and an overheating planet have been conned into believing that a new way of doing politics is actually possible and Opportunity can lead the way.

Their bonkers policies on taxing the bejesus out of us , making everyone a welfare beneficiary and increasing the annual government deficit by 20 percent don’t seem to matter when the leader looks good and talks a smooth game.

It’s nonsense of course. Politics has never been anything but a dog fight for every vote and the National Party have some serious scrapping to do in the next three months to stay within reach of a 30 percent vote.

On May 14th this year, the National Party marked 90 years of existence. August 12th 2026 will go down as one of the darkest days in their often illustrious history.

Many more like that and the party will struggle to be around to reach a century.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here