In his tilt at the leadership last November, Chris Bishop plainly forgot Omar’s excellent advice from The Wire: “If you come at the king, better not miss.” He’s now paid the price. Yet in the wake of last week’s Cabinet reshuffle, at least Bishop can take solace from being punished by a flailing, failing Christopher Luxon. The whole episode has cemented Bishop as Luxon’s chief rival and heir apparent. Even so, publicly humiliation is never a pleasant experience. After all the hours spent by Bishop on policy work on so many fronts, it has come down to this.
Last week’s demotions were also strategic. Bishop’s ministerial roles were not lightened: the job of Attorney -General was added to his load. His removal from both the Leader of the House and Campaign Chair roles are intended to weaken his relationships with the party caucus. The real test will come later, if Luxon also drops Bishop (currently number three on the party list) further down the rankings, and closer to the danger zone.
That’s relevant because if National’s current polling percentages were repeated on election day, its electorate victories would make the list a far less reliable safety net, especially as National continues to bleed support to New Zealand First. Almost certainly, the centre right bloc will still win in November, but it could lose some of National’s senior list MPs in the process. That’s why Luxon’s list ranking for Bishop will be watched very closely.
As the NZ Herald explained in 2023, the party list is very much a PM’s prerogative:
National’s list ranking is officially a horizontal process, with input from the wider membership fed into the party’s list ranking committee, which includes the party leader, deputy leader, president, board and many regional representatives ranking the list. In practice, however, most National members consider list ranking to be the prerogative of the leader, who is able to use it to stamp their mark on the party.
As Campaign Chair, Bishop would have had a more direct input into the list rankings. Given the dire state of National’s current polling under Luxon, Bishop will now have to spend more time shoring up his electorate seat than might otherwise have been the case. Although Election 2023 was the high water mark for National, Bishop’s Hutt South majority was still only 1,332 and – in another sign of how tight the margins are – National’s party vote in Hutt South in 2023 was only 1.5% ahead of Labour. With the blue tide going out somewhat this year, Hutt South once again looks like a key marginal.
On other matters, it speaks volumes about last week’s Cabinet reshuffle that Luxon felt Penny Simmonds merited a recall to Cabinet, while the party could afford to continue to ignore James Meagher’s claims to Cabinet elevation. Promoting Meagher should have been a no-brainer if rewarding talent was the main factor.
Let’s be clear about that. Reconnecting Simmonds to the ministerial gravy train was all about shoring up Luxon’s support in caucus, not about doing what’s best for the National Party now, and in future. The sudden elevation to Cabinet status of Wairarapa MP Mike Butterick looks like a similar act of desperation. The last time a National Party leader promoted a relatively unknown MP from obscurity in this fashion was when a beleaguered Judith Collins suddenly vaulted Andrew Bayly towards the top of the caucus rankings. It didn’t turn out well.
Footnote: That said, Chris Bishop is at risk of developing a reputation for tanking in the Big Match moments. Reportedly, Nicola Willis and Bishop were the key movers in ending Simon Bridges tenure as party leader, and installing the hapless Todd Muller in his place. Thanks, guys.
Last November’s attempt to roll Luxon remains shrouded in mystery but evidently, it failed. Bishop and his rumoured numbers man, James Meagher, have now been punished. As mentioned, the list rankings will indicate whether Luxon is willing to turn this rift within the National Party caucus into a death match.
Strait, Talking
Last week, New Zealand met with 40 other nations to explore options for restoring the free movement of commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Previously, New Zealand lent its support to a similar EU initiative called Operation Aspides. Since 2024, a four-frigate EU flotilla has guarded merchant shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden against anti-ship missiles and drones launched by the Houthi armed forces in Yemen.
Whether the Aspides model would work in the Strait of Hormuz is questionable. Aspides provides a purely defensive, re-active shield. It doesn’t pretend to stop the Houthis from firing missiles, and it hasn’t lowered the cost of maritime insurance for those ships still willing to take the risk. Crucially, it also hasn’t fully restored maritime trade. At best, current maritime trade through the region is reportedly running at only 60% of pre-attack levels. These negative considerations would be amped up considerably in the Strait of Hormuz.
Although the 40 nation meeting last week called for the “immediate and unconditional” opening of the Strait of Hormuz, the nations involved also seemed unwilling to condone or aid the illegal US/Israeli military offensive against Iran, either directly or indirectly. Logically then, any protective naval mission could only be deployed after de-escalation has started, and the wider conflict has abated. For New Zealand to get involved, any such naval mission in the Strait of Hormuz would also presumably need to have a UN mandate. That mission would have to survive a Security Council veto. Fat chance.
To date, the United Nations efforts with respect the Strait of Hormuz have been partisan, and less than encouraging. Yes, Bahrain did succeed in passing Resolution 2817 through the 15 member Security Council, with the two abstentions being China and the Russian Federation. This resolution condemned Iran for its “egregious attacks” on neighbouring countries, and blamed Tehran for the spiral of violence across the Middle East.
In abstaining, China’s UN ambassador argued that the US and Israeli forces had launched their offensive against Iran without Security Council authorisation, and that these attacks must cease at once. While China stressed that the security and territorial integrity of the Gulf states had to be respected, Beijing also cautioned that the resolution adopted “does not fully reflect the root cause, and overall picture of the conflict in a balanced manner.”
For similar reasons, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to the UN also found fault with the Bahrain resolution. Read without context, Russia reportedly argued, Bahrain’s resolution would lead one to believe that Tehran decided to strike targets across the region for no reason, and out of nothing other than sheer malice.
Moreover, Russia’s ambassador continued, the Bahrain resolution also represented the need to safeguard civilian life in what he called “an extremely one-sided” fashion – as if, he said, Israel and the United States had not killed men, women and children in Iran and murdered the country’s Supreme Leader. “The Council’s adoption [of this text] could be interpreted by bad-faith actors, and first and foremost by those who started this war, to continue their acts of aggression against Iran,” he warned.
However, the Security Council not only passed the Bahrain resolution but voted down (by default) an alternative draft proposed put forward by the Russian Federation. The latter vote was revealing: there were 2 votes against the Russian draft (Latvia, the United States) four in favour (China, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Somalia) but 9 abstentions (Bahrain, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, France, Greece, Liberia, Panama, and the United Kingdom).
Meaning: the UN’s most powerful body is split on the Iran war, and split largely along Cold War lines. The United States will veto any resolution calling it (and/or Israel) to account. Likewise, why would China and the Russian Federation with-hold their veto and wave through any UN resolution that rescued the US and Israel from the mess they’ve created by attacking Iran?
The status quo suits Russia just fine. After all, the current spike in the global price of oil is helping Russia to finance its war in Ukraine, just when that war was looking like becoming an unsustainable drain on the Kremlin’s resources. On oil prices, on bullying Zelensky into making territorial concessions, on breaking up NATO, again and again, Donald Trump has been Vladimir Putin’s indispensable best friend – even though the US is getting absolutely nothing from Moscow in return.
Slay Belles
Among the origin myths for why Catherine Garner makes music under the name Slayyyter, is that she’s paying homage to the stoner character Ron Slater (played by Rory Cochrane) from Richard Linklater’s classic coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused. It could well be the case. Garner does punningly toy with Linklater’s name on one of the lesser tracks from her new album Wor$t Girl in America.
If naming influences though, I’d have to go with the early Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Karen O’s intense, almost hysterical performance on a track like “Tick.” At 29, Garner is finally getting that headlong, late adolescence rush into focus. Better loud than never.