PM Under Pressure

With criticism coming from all directions, what can Christopher Luxon do?

All your life is Time magazine
I read it too
What does it mean?
Pressure
I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale
But here you are with your faith
And your Peter Pan advice
You have no scars on your face
And you cannot handle pressure

Songwriter: Billy Joel.

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Christopher Luxon is under pressure from all sides. The reviews are poor, from the last liberal voice at NZME to the neoliberal ones at Stuff.

So the question is, has Mr Luxon’s lack of talent and vision begun to catch up with him? Are people, from party apparatchiks to media cheerleaders and even voters, realising they've backed a dud? Let’s take a look at what people are saying…

In yesterday’s Herald, Simon Wilson had a paywalled article: Christopher Luxon’s long, slow walk to oblivion in which he said that support for the government was “at best, stuck”.

Simon pointed out that after a year of controversy, many Kiwis remain focussed on the cost of living.

While that isn’t necessarily entirely down to this government, and there is an angry element to the electorate that increasingly seeks to blame everything on whoever is in power, the fact remains that “if a political party promises to fix problems, wins power, and then doesn’t fix those problems, they should expect there will be blood.”

The problem for Christopher is that it’s his neck beneath the guillotine’s blade, and he’s the only one trying to row the good ship coalition in the direction of wherever it is he is trying to take us.

As for Winston and Seymour, as Wilson says, they “stoke the fires, and he lets them get away with it. Act and NZ First are both more interested in entertaining their own bases than helping to govern the country constructively.”

Photo montage: Newsroom.

So while Christopher sits there gormless, his mouth full of dead rats in the form of the policies of his minor partners, they do nothing of the kind in return.

With all the “agreeing to disagree”, they mostly choose to disagree and complain that Luxon’s not going fast enough, or he’s overstepping, or whatever. Winston periodically just wanders off, whether present or otherwise, while Seymour spits out his rat and feeds it to the school children of Aotearoa.

I should add that I’m sure there isn’t any rat, or any other type of rodent for that matter, in Seymour’s school lunches - I imagine it’s all beef. No, I’m kidding, there’s no beef in there - let’s just call it “mystery meat”.

You know, like a pizza you order from a kebab shop that lists “meat cubes” as one of the ingredients. By the way, it’s probably best not to tell David about “mystery meat”; we sure don’t want him getting any more ideas.

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Towards the end of his article, Simon sums up the situation:

“If Labour and the Greens get themselves seriously back in the game, and who would doubt, on current polling, that they can, there’s trouble ahead for Luxon. He’s given it his absolutely, determinedly, laser-focused best shot, and yet he’s stuck. What else has he got? I think it is unlikely that his party will go into election year tolerating this.”

Simon ends by saying that he thinks there are four senior National MPs who probably believe they could do a better job.

Honestly, I’d be horrified if anyone from that party didn’t think they could do better than what we’ve witnessed from Luxon, but still.

Ministers of the Sixth National Government. Image: Doug Mountain.

A quick glance at their front bench shows there is a lot of confidence. However, I can only see one person who might win an election, and I reckon I’ll leave that to the end. Maybe you’ve already guessed. Here's a very small clue: It’s not Simeon Brown.

Meanwhile, those on the right are getting antsy. If there’s only going to be one term, then Luxon better go faster - more cuts, deeper, harder - c’mon, they’re only getting started. If you’re going to lose, then you might as well go hell for leather and do what you can while you still have power.

In Damien Grant’s latest Stuff-sponsored paean to the ACT party, he pronounces:

“David Seymour and his small coterie of MPs are setting the agenda. National is stumbling to respond. In the recent Taxpayers Union poll, National’s numbers have settled to the low 30s, on par with the Opposition but insufficient to allow Luxon to return to power.

Yet this fall hasn’t migrated to either ACT nor New Zealand First, whose support remains torpid.”

I thought he was a little generous with ACT, but to be fair, the Tax Payers’ Union poll often is, too. Still, “torpid” was an unusual choice of words. I’m guessing he really meant to say “turgid”.

"Torpid" is an adjective that means lacking energy or vigor, or being sluggish in functioning or acting. For example, you might describe a sloth as torpid if it refuses to move from a tree branch.

Grant’s main gripe is that he knows where Seymour stands on issues but doesn’t know about Luxon. It’s a fair point; Seymour might want to do things you and I disagree with, but at least he’s honest about them. With Luxon, on the other hand, how would you know?

Image: BeFunky.

Damien says Luxon opposes the Treaty Principles Bill but won’t explain why. He has no view on asset sales and claims to be fiscally responsible, yet he fails to take the necessary actions to achieve that.

He concludes by saying of Luxon, “His challenge, and something his colleagues need to consider, is his inability to do more than manage a team when the country appears to be looking for leadership.”

It’s fair to say that whether you're liberal or neoliberal, the Prime Minister leaves much to be desired. In a popularity contest, he risks being squeezed in the middle to the point of irrelevance.

It’s an uphill task. Winning an election with National’s policies isn’t easy at the best of times. They tend to make a few better off but many more worse off, which is a hard sell to an informed electorate, or at least one that notices when it’s getting wet. I posted the following to that effect:

In reply, Kirk said he was wondering about the smell. Of course, there were some unpleasant descriptions of what people felt was coming their way, and it wasn’t money. Honestly, it sounded like they needed a more absorbent paper supply.

Moira posted, “Fifty years of ‘trickle-down’ has turned millionaires into billionaires and the working class into the working poor.” That sounds about right, considering Thatcher and Reagan before our neoliberals took us on that merry dance in the mid-1980s. It also sounds like a mission statement for the National Party.

Reheating a bunch of failed policies and finding, low and behold, that they don’t work, you know, like boot camps, charter schools, or growing the economy through austerity, can’t be enough to explain National’s decline in the polls - people already knew about those. They were announced before the election, and everyone said they wouldn’t work. Can you guess the next bit?

No, it must be about the leader, Christopher Luxon, but what was it?

It can’t have been the meaningless waffle; people were happy with that back in 2023. Maybe it was the fact that in a, so-far-as-I-can-recall, unprecedented move, he gave himself no portfolios at all, saying that his contribution would be his leadership.

Then we discovered that his leadership meant photo ops, overseas trips, and pissing around on TikTok. The thing is, Kiwis don’t appreciate shirkers. Especially the right; it’s no fun complaining about those who do bugger all when you’ve elected one to lead the country.

So I wondered, what could Christopher do to appeal more to voters? And asked:

Of course, I got a barrage of suggestions that he resign, fire David Seymour, or go somewhere else, maybe Te Puke.

My friend Simon made me to laugh quite hard by saying, “Other than the T-shirt trick, I'd magic marker 'TWAT' on my forehead, highly relatable.”

There were suggestions of a snap election. Given the polls, I appreciate that might sound suicidal, but it’s hard to see them improving over the next 18 months. So, hey, Christopher, if you’re reading, I reckon you should go for it. You’ll make people happy in a way you never have before.

Speaking of unlikely events, Andy suggested the PM should “Tell the truth and apologise—publicly acknowledge that he, his front bench, and coalition partners have all been on a mission to exploit, oppress, and defraud the 99%—before calling an early election.”

Lorraine had a good idea: suggesting that Luxon could “Become a genuine person with empathy based on an understanding of others and how they live. Perhaps he could work in one soup kitchen for five or six hours each week and actually talk with (not talk at) and listen to the people there. I say only one soup kitchen so he gets to know the regulars and the other volunteers.” I replied that a year ought to do it, but no TV cameras.

I enjoyed John’s suggestion that Luxon taser Brian Tamaki live on TV, but I reckon it could be even more popular if he shot 50,000 volts into the ACT leader.

Finally, I thought Pita made an excellent point: “His popularity was always poor for those who didn't vote for him, but unlike other leaders, he never once tried to reach out across the aisle to mend bridges and work for all of NZ. Personally, I'd start there. Simple but effective.”

If I had one piece of advice for Christopher Luxon, it would be to stop presenting that silly fake persona and just be himself. The only issue is that I have an awful suspicion he already is.

What about you, all you lovely people, do you have any ideas that might improve Luxon’s dropping popularity, other than resigning, firing Seymour out of a cannon, and not one of those circus prop ones either, or generally just going away?

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. Erica Stanford is the only minister I could see leading National with any success right now. She manages to come across as a real person who can communicate what they’re doing, which is a good thing, even if you don’t fully agree with it.

I appreciate that the combination of being authentic and being able to communicate ought to be about as difficult as chewing gum and walking simultaneously. Still, I don’t see anyone else with those attributes and sufficient experience in their caucus.

We certainly don’t see it from Christopher, and I suspect he might be in for an interesting time if his party sinks much lower in the polls and his partners and backbenchers become restless.

Perhaps a diamond will form under pressure rather than a piece of coal. What do you think?

To end, an old favourite of mine, Billy Joel with Pressure, hope you enjoy it. 🙂