The National Party caucus has got itself into in a real bind. For weeks, their Cabinet Ministers and MPs have had their work cut out trying to look credible while voicing their undying loyalty to an unpopular Prime Minister widely seen to be not up to the job. Does National really want to devote itself to keeping the Luxon balloon aloft until November? Talking through clenched teeth can be so stressful.
The centre right is not normally known for tolerating losers, let alone for praising them to high heaven. Yet National has been dutifully getting in behind its leader, and celebrating his sage political stewardship: to the point where New Zealand is now at risk of looking like the North Korea of the South Pacific. Everywhere you turned during the past week, Luxon’s colleagues were offering pledges of allegiance to the Dear Leader.
It shouldn’t be this hard. In many ways, the Iran War should have been a godsend for an embattled Christopher Luxon. In January, the economic recovery was still narrowly based and already faltering. Inflation was on the rise in the December quarter, which meant that the mortgaged middle classes were likely to be facing a hike in interest rates before the November election. In the middle of National’s time of need, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to attack Iran, for no apparent reason.
What an opportunity. Basically, the Iran War and the subsequent fuel crisis not only handed the coalition government an excuse for its own shortcomings. It also offered the PM a golden opportunity to shine, to take the helm and lead the nation’s response. In such times of crisis, a competent leader can bridge political differences, transcend petty domestic concerns and unite the country in a “we’re all in this together” moment. What a gift this crisis should have been for a PM under fire, and for an incumbent government facing an election. Not this time, though.
Alas, Luxon has looked and acted like the proverbial possum in the headlights. The leaders of other countries (Australia, South Korea) have pro-actively (a) engaged with, and informed the public (b) asked the corporate sector to identify ways that business can conserve fuel (c) made public transport free (d) reduced use of the government’s limousine fleet and (e) headed off overseas to conduct face to face diplomacy with Asian leaders, in order to shore up existing contracts, and secure non-traditional sources of fuel and fertiliser.
Instead, Christopher Luxon has been invisible on the world stage, while here at home he is still encouraging everyone to live in denial that a fuel crisis even exists. In this leadership vacuum, Mainfreight has been publicly bickering with KiwiRail over rail’s response to the crisis. Seven weeks into the war, the New Zealand public still hasn’t been given any meaningful details of how the fuel crisis will be managed, if and when serious supply chain blockages occur.
Leading with a liability
Out in the real world, the polls – including last night shocker for the centre right and the PM – continue to reflect a rising public disenchantment with Luxon, and with the party he leads. As mentioned, the caucus is currently still expressing solidarity with Luxon and heaping praise on him. Foremost within the spin has been the claim that Luxon deserves a lot of credit for the way he has held the three-way coalition together.
In fact, the coalition’s survival has not been the by-product of any management wizardry by Christopher Luxon. More often than not, he has simply handed over policy formation and the rollout of legislation to his junior partners. On his watch, the National Party has looked like the captive in a driverless car, rolling downhill. As a direct consequence of Luxon being MIA, the public has been subjected to the reactionary policies of ACT and New Zealand First, neither of whom achieved even 10% of the vote in 2023, before Luxon stepped aside and let them run loose.
The ineptitude began with the coalition agreements. A competent leader of the largest party in this coalition would not have allowed the junior partners to tie National to extremist policies that had no public mandate, and which (often) bore no resemblance to the policies on which National had campaigned. The whole Treaty Principles Bill farce – via which Luxon handed ACT a six month, taxpayer-funded platform to attack the very idea of a Treaty partnership – was a typical case in point.
If anything, this hollowing out of National and its re-making in ACT’s image has only gathered pace of late. This wholesale change to Treaty references across all legislation aims to weaken the Crown’s obligations to Māori into a mere need to take them into account. The reduction to the Treaty commitments in education entail more of the same retreat from responsible governance. Former National Cabinet Ministers have expressed their dismay at the harms the current government is allowing to be done to race relations in this country.
The same lack of spine has been evident in foreign policy, where NZF’s leader has intimidated National into acquiescing to his agenda. In short, Luxon is being praised for managing his partners, when in so many policy areas, he has simply surrendered to them. Luxon talks strong, but acts weak. That is the conclusion being reached by the vast majority of New Zealanders, and it is what the current polls are reflecting.
What to Do?
So, Luxon is a proven liability. Yet the party may still swallow hard, and carry him across the finish line in November, regardless. If Chris Bishop is the alternative, one can somewhat understand the party’s indecision. Despite his work ethic and occasional affability, Bishop is probably too lacking in gravitas, too socially liberal, too immature, and too gaffe-prone when put under pressure.
Besides, Bishop has been guilty of serious political mis-judgements: e.g. in a previous leadership crisis, he chose to become Todd Muller’s champion. Enough said. More recently, Bishop was responsible for the housing intensification shambles, which provoked a strong backlash among the propertied classes in Auckland that normally, instinctively, vote National. In sum, Bishop is too risky a bet for a conservative party that’s inherently risk averse.
Erica Stanford? She does have the considerable advantage of being an Aucklander, but is probably more popular with the public than within a caucus where she has few obvious allies. As Werewolf pointed out weeks ago, it is a sign of National’s leadership deficit that Mark Mitchell is the option most likely to win back the former party faithful who have defected to New Zealand First. That’s a mixed blessing, however. Meaning : would Mitchell have much crossover appeal for other New Zealanders? Probably not. But a ticket lead by Mitchell and balanced by Stanford as his deputy? That might work.
One can see why the ongoing dismay within the National Party over Luxon’s dismal tenure has to be tempered by the limited replacement options on offer. Maybe the party hierarchy has decided that National can still win in November despite Luxon, rather than because of him. Winning ugly is still winning.
Hungary, redux
One last thing about the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary. Over the past week, the right wing apologists for Orban have been saying well, he got defeated, so he can’t have been such an authoritarian ruler. That argument minimises the achievement of Peter Magyar – who scored a smashing victory despite Orban’s relentless gerrymandering of the electoral map, and despite his re-writing of Hungary’s Constitution that gave double weight to Orban’s rural strongholds over the urban seats of his critics.
That’s even before you get into the physical intimidation of Orban’s opponents, and the fear that many people had of losing their jobs if they spoke out. Plus, there was Orban’s stacking of the judiciary, the closures of opposition think tanks, and the confiscations of critical media which would then be sold off to Orban’s allies. Paul Krugman has hosted an illuminating interview on Orban’s chilling modus operandi.
Yes, Orban was not an Assad. He did not torture and execute his critics. But it was the systematic way he denied political space to everyone else (while vastly enriching himself and his cronies in the process) that made him such an appealing role model for would-be autocrats in the West.
Magyar now has the job of undoing this regime, without repeating its excesses. As the New York Times recently pointed out, this is the same problem the United States will face, once Trump has gone. Trump has corrupted US political system so extensively, crossed so many red lines and stacked the system (including the judiciary) with so many of his sycophants that any reform-minded successor will find it extremely difficult to repair what has been so comprehensively damaged.
Point being: if you simply fire all of the Trump acolytes, you would end up looking and acting just like Trump. But if you leave them in place, you will perpetuate many of the harms he has done. As the NYT concluded, Trump has already done damage on a scale that will take a generation or more, to undo. Hungary at least, has begun the long process of recovery from the Orban nightmare. One more time, here’s that great clip of the next possible Health Minister in Hungary, celebrating on election night.
Replacement Theory
Talking of replacements, here’s some good live footage of Paul Westerberg and the Replacements doing their homage to the Memphis legend, Alex Chilton.
And here’s the man himself, captured at his most fragile and melancholy: