Source: Radio New Zealand
Analysis: Without probably realising it the Prime Minister has just put more pressure than ever on himself to perform and lift his party polling.
By calling a formal motion of confidence vote in caucus on Tuesday morning, the caucus were presented with a ‘back him or dump him’ option and chose to back him.
But in backing him there is an expectation that the National Party do better, and that includes the Prime Minister.
Yet, in recent months self-reflection has been missing from Christopher Luxon’s comments – instead he’s concentrated on the party needing to do better.
New Zealand is still a country where a large number of people vote based on personalities and the popularity of a leader goes a long way to securing a party vote.
Luxon almost got to a point of reflecting on his own weaknesses in his Monday morning media round when he acknowledged not everyone would want to invite him to a barbecue.
He’s not John Key, and he seemed to have finally realised that, yet after confirming the confidence of his caucus on Tuesday he then fronted media and single-handedly blamed “speculation and rumour” and a “media soap opera” for the position he had found himself in.
There’s always room in those moments for a bit of self-deprecation and reflection, and it would have gone a long way toward acknowleding those in the caucus and wider party who have been questioning Luxon’s leadership.
Those people exist whether Luxon chooses to believe it or not, but instead of letting them know he had heard them by publicly saying he too needed to improve his personal performance, he blamed others.
By blaming the media reports he’s by extension blaming those MPs who felt they had no choice but to talk to journalists about how bad things had got.
Simeon Brown heading into the Tuesday morning caucus. RNZ / Craig McCulloch
National’s campaign chair Simeon Brown told RNZ on his way into that caucus meeting that MPs who were leaking to the media should either stop, or quit the party.
Senior MP Mark Mitchell told RNZ the caucus was a safe and comfortable place for MPs to air their concerns and be heard. He said caucus was where robust discussion could take place.
However, it’s clear some MPs haven’t felt safe to raise concerns, or have been shot down when they have. Senior whip Stuart Smith appears to be one of those people.
Multiple media outlets, including RNZ, have confirmed the reports originally published in the NZ Herald on Friday morning that Smith had unsuccessfully tried to contact Luxon ahead of Easter to speak to him about caucus concerns over his leadership, but that Luxon had effectively ghosted him.
On Tuesday morning ahead of the caucus vote Smith, via the prime minister’s office, provided a written statement saying he wouldn’t be at the caucus meeting due to a “longstanding personal appointment”.
Stuart Smith. RNZ / Angus Dreaver
He said he didn’t contact the Prime Minister or his office “seeking a meeting” and that he was “disappointed by recent speculative media coverage”.
Smith’s statement and denials needed to have landed on Friday if he and Luxon wanted them to be believed.
It’s not credible to wait four days to put out that statement, especially when nobody from the prime minister’s office has disputed the story in the interim.
The statement read as if it had been written by the prime minister’s office and when Brown was asked whether he or the prime minister had put pressure on Smith to make that statement, he refused to answer the question multiple times.
The relationship between the senior whip and the prime minister, and by extension his office, is pivotal. It’s Smith’s job to keep Luxon and his chief of staff abreast of caucus morale and any issues that crop up.
Luxon confirmed on Monday neither he nor his office had contacted Smith since the story broke on Friday morning, which shows the traditional closeness of that relationship doesn’t exist in this caucus.
It’s unclear whether Smith had planned to be at Parliament on Tuesday, and was told not to bother turning up – he hasn’t returned RNZ’s calls.
Smith may have lost the prime minister’s trust at this point, and if he had been at caucus he would have, as senior whip, been tasked with the job of scrutineer alongside his junior, Suze Redmayne.
That would have meant Smith would have been one of just two people to know how many in the caucus supported Luxon. In his absence party president Sylvia Wood counted the votes with Redmayne.
The next caucus vote could end up being for a replacement senior whip.
Luxon made the right call holding the vote on his leadership. His error was not doing it sooner.
The speculation around his job security has been going on for months and the party has been hurt in the polls because he didn’t stem the blood loss sooner.
Now that he’s called the vote, and won it, he is relying on his caucus backing him and keeping any concerns they have in the coming six months either to themselves, or airing them in the privacy of caucus meetings.
It’s a big gamble and if the leaks start again then Luxon has set a precedent and could find himself repeating a confidence vote before the year is out.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has already warned of those consequences, and he would know having seen the inner workings of the National Party for himself in a former life.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand