Christopher Luxon went into and came out of today’s special caucus meeting as damaged goods. If survival is to be counted as winning, it has still looked more like a Pyrrhic victory than a cause for celebration. No doubt, some of his advisors will try to spin today’s events as a “Luxon: The Great Survivor” story. But if it takes his own colleagues three hours of deliberation to decide to vote for him, that sends a pretty grim message to undecided voters in November.
Only elsewhere will the champagne corks be popping. Labour will be breathing a deep sigh of relief that its main election asset – Christopher Luxon – will still be front and centre of the government’s election campaign. Opportunity will be relieved that an articulate contender like Erica Stanford will not be leading National any time soon, if ever.
For its part, New Zealand First will be delighted that the drift of social conservative voters from National to NZF will continue, and not be reversed. More than ever, keeping Luxon will now ensure that the next centre-right government will be at the beck and call of Winston Peters.
ACT will also be over the moon, knowing that in the post-election negotiations, it will once again have only Luxon – a proven pushover – standing in the way of ACT making major policy gains. The initial lobbying on Luxon’s behalf by John Key also spoke volumes. Calling in yesterday’s man did nothing to make the case that Luxon is the frontperson that National needs to fix the basics, and build for the future.
True, given Labour’s timid reluctance to provide genuine alternatives on economic policy, National will still almost certainly win in November. However, the caucus has just swallowed hard and embraced the grim reality that this victory will be despite Luxon, and not because of him. It will also come with an avoidable number of casualties from within National’s own ranks.
Still, the caucus has got only itself to blame for saddling itself with a known liability incapable of recognising his own shortcomings, let alone improving on them. As Jenna Lynch indicated this morning on Stuff, one of the main signs of Luxon’s inability to read the room is his belief that he is always the smartest person in it.
Epic fail
Historically, National has had a mixed record when it comes to organising successful leadership coups. The classic example was the 1980 “colonels’ coup” against Robert Muldoon. The caucus plotters had great timing (Muldoon was out of the country) and they did have the numbers for change. The fatal flaw was that Brian Talboys (the Muldoon deputy groomed to take over) suddenly got cold feet at the very, very last moment. Once again, the political advice of Omar seems to be timelessly relevant. You come at the king, you best not miss.
This has implications. National in general – and Erica Stanford in particular– can talk all they like about National’s commitments to excellence, to nurturing talent and to promoting the best and brightest all the way from the classroom, to the caucus room. After today’s debacle though, Stanford’s failure to advance on merit shows that the party to which she belongs is (in fact) wedded to mediocrity, and suspicious of the talent in its midst, lest promoting it might prove risky for some of the dullards being left behind.
On the bright side, nothing says “land of opportunity’ more than the likelihood that any random member of the National Party caucus would probably be able to lead the party into the next election more capably than Christopher Luxon. Probably, it was the competing options that served to keep Luxon in the top job. The plotters may have been united in their disdain for Luxon, but were terminally dis-united over what should happen next. When anyone else but Luxon is actually everyone else but Luxon, the alternatives will tend to cancel each other out. If you, why not me etc?
Plainly, the National caucus vote today displayed nothing remotely like Labour’s unanimity that Jacinda Ardern should replace Andrew Little. In the face of his own inadequacies, Little took one for the team, and walked. There isn’t a skerrick of that Captain Oates attitude (What would be best for the National Party?) in Christopher Luxon. Corporate life seems to have trained him to think that not winning makes you a LOSER.
Nicola Willis? Erica Stanford? Chris Bishop? To an outsider, a triumvirate of Stanford as PM, Bishop as deputy and Willis continuing as Finance Minister was not ideal but looked like the best available mix on ability, geography, and gender grounds. Sooner or later, National is going to have to figure out a succession plan. It can’t keep on kicking the Luxon can down the road, and hoping it will somehow turn into a silver goblet.
Footnote One: Oddly, National’s leadership talk had a short-sighted focus on who might be best able to front National’s election campaign. There has been surprising little talk about the wisdom of entrusting the post-election coalition talks to the current PM. Luxon appears to have no negotiating skills whatsoever. As a result, much of National’s second term agenda will now be dictated by the next round of policy giveaways to ACT and New Zealand First that Luxon commits National to honouring.
Footnote Two: Luxon isn’t the only one addicted to motivational self hype. Evidently, the National Party caucus has chosen today to follow the advice contained in the best-selling self-help book The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. The dust cover blurb for The Let Them Theory says that the book “Teaches you how to stop wasting energy on things you cannot control. It helps you find inner calm by letting others be themselves.”
For months, the caucus has enabled Luxon to be Luxon, in the hope that change will come from within. Today, by renewing its vows to honour and obey Luxon, the caucus is seeking the inner peace that comes from acceptance.
Sibling non-rivalries
The Carpenters aside, there haven’t been a lot of successful brother-sister acts, so Sam and Louise Sullivan probably have the odds stacked against them. Not that they would care, since their burgeoning music career is still mainly an add-on to their day jobs as school teachers.
In this long, rambling recent article on Paste, they’re endlessly articulate in second guessing the influences/contexts of their music. It isn’t retro, although Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk is a key reference point. Reportedly, their warm lo-fi pop intricacies are the product of hours of obsessive tinkering, much like Lindsay Buckingham’s finest work. Or maybe they’re just a couple of counter-intuitive over thinkers.
Here’s the opening track from their new record Love & Devotion, an album that generously rewards total immersion:
The other 21st century brother-sister act of note is the Fiery Furnaces, aka Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger. They’ve recently re-released their 2004 masterwork Blueberry Boat, which still sounds just as strange and challenging now as it did the first time around.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the FFs quasi-comeback single from 2020, and its opening line: “Trigonometry tutors often go to dance class / three times a week….” As a retro song about regretting having regrets, this has always seemed right on target:
There we were
Down at the so and so on somewhere
Cross town from where we were some other time
Don’t you remember we were happy there?
Can you remember it right now?
The dog’s asleep in its crate
And everything is right with the world perhaps
But I wouldn’t see you like that again for years
Now one can’t make good the gaps
I wake up trying to text emoticons and XO, all caps…
Would you meet me
Down at the so and so on somewhere?