The National Party caucus seems to have a death wish. In increasingly “uncertain and volatile times,” it has placed all its bets on the guy who has been seriously underperforming in more certain, less volatile times. Christopher Luxon survived Tuesday’s caucus vote and confidently declared his leadership to now be a settled matter, and told the media to treat it as such. Less confidently, he refused to take any questions from the media he had just told to do their job.
Will Tuesday’s caucus vote stop the murmuring about Luxon’s fitness to lead? No, and nor should it. The reasons for the leadership vote haven’t gone away. Beyond the caucus room, the country faces challenges that so far, the government has largely failed to acknowledge, let alone resolve. Such as: income inequality, the failing public health system, child poverty, the cost of living, unemployment, the gender wage gap, homelessness, electricity pricing, the supermarket duopoly, the banks cartel, the imminent fuel crisis and so on, and on.
Many of these problems have gone backwards under the coalition government. That’s why the current polls are telling us that only 16% of the public are picking Luxon as their preferred PM, and it’s also why National is barely registering 30% support. Tellingly, Luxon has felt compelled to ask for a mandate from his caucus before he has even finished his first term on the job. That is a sign of weakness, not strength.
All that aside, his caucus has evidently decided that Luxon is a weight they can afford to carry to Election Day and beyond. Unfortunately, this faith also means the caucus is willing to let Luxon chair the post-election negotiations on coalition agreements.
Every voter in the country should be worried by that prospect. Last time around, Luxon proved to be an empty vessel that David Seymour and Winston Peters were more than happy to fill with policies that lacked a democratic mandate. After November, who knows what other reactionary policies Luxon will allow ACT and New Zealand First to impose on the country, despite the vast bulk of the electorate not voting for them? Asset sales may be the least of it.
To the National Party caucus, Luxon is their least worst option. The public will be more sceptical. The cost of living crisis that Luxon promised to fix rages on, unabated. The worst of the rising fuel prices (and fuel shortages) are yet to come. Inflation was a significant concern before the Iran War, and is rising sharply. By mid-year, the Reserve Bank will be raising interest rates on the mortgaged middle class, at the same time as petrol prices, air fares, and the cost of imported/transported goods will be going through the roof.
Come November, will the majority of voters be likely to blame Luxon for these outcomes? Or even three years on, can they be persuaded to still blame Labour? Or will they blame Donald Trump, who destroyed the mirage of an economic recovery that never quite seemed to materialise? Hard to tell. Conceivably, some voters might even take pity on Luxon, and treat him as a little battler doing his best, in the face of the insuperable challenges facing the nation.
Maybe National’s campaign slogan should be “Chris Luxon: not the leader anyone wants, but the one we’ve got.” If you’re fatalistic about this being an era of diminishing expectations, he’s your man.
Footnote One: True, one term governments are rare in this country. Even more rare are governments that perform better in their second term of office. In 1987, a suddenly unpopular Lange government campaigned on the premise this was only half time, and that in the second term, his government would really deliver. And so it did. The second term of the fourth Labour government delivered market policies that have done real and lasting damage to this country. Just as Donald Trump is doing now, on his second time around.
Footnote Two: Keep that in mind, next time you hear Christopher Luxon saying that there are so many challenges, and National still has much more work to do. Hmm. Is this a promise, or a threat? To offer an analogy: when your bathroom starts leaking, you call in a plumber who says they know what they’re doing. They claim to be the best.
Yet after time has elapsed and despite a lot of expensive make-work, the bathroom is even further underwater. The plumber then says: there is so much more work to do. He’s right about that. But what’s really needed is an entirely different plumber.
Post-script: Winston Peters has a keen self interest in National continuing to be led by a pliable nitwit. At least five points of NZF’s current poll rise has come from National Party defectors, who might well have been lured home by a leadership change. Skilfully, Peters has concentrated his criticism on the alleged tactical mistake of Luxon calling for the leadership vote (in any relationship, asking “Do you still love me?” rarely ends well) rather than on querying Luxon’s fitness to govern.
So it goes. Luxon stays, and National continues to bleed votes to NZF. Desperately, Nicola Willis and the team are trying to scare voters by saying Peters will go with Labour. No-one, including Willis, believes that to be true. Judging by this government’s track record in office, the majority of voters have far more reason to be scared that a vote for National is really a vote for Peters, and for Seymour.
Songs of passive aggression
Genre conventions can wear out their welcome. The trick – and the challenge – is to create variations on those well-worn musical tropes that can still make them function as originally intended. More often than not, Nate Amos of This Is Lorelei has been very good at adding nuances to familiar alt-country conventions. As a result, This Is Lorelei’s 2024 album Box For Buddy, Box For Star has gradually earned itself a devoted niche audience.
Here’s a cover version by Katie Crutchfield (aka Waxahatchee) of one of that album’s key songs. For all of its superficial prettiness, “Where’s Your Love Now” is really an angry, resentful, blame-attributing piece of work. Arguably, the contrast between the medium and the message is what lifts it above its sources:
Alt country tends to lend itself to songs of wistful passive aggression. That could be why this classic Madi Diaz track works so well, as an exception to the rule. It is prettily melodic, but its melancholy anger is also right up front and personal:
Alt country crossed over some time ago into the territory that 90s indie rock used to occupy. Here’s a recent good example. Amusingly, the Kentucky musician S.G. Goodman has just released her take on the one and only Top Forty hit that the Butthole Surfers ever had, some 30 years ago: