OPINION: If National Won’t Move on Luxon, They’ll Wear the Loss

Christopher Luxon says he’s not considering his future.

Of course he isn’t.

Prime Ministers rarely do when the walls start closing in.

But politics doesn’t care what a leader thinks about their own performance. Voters decide that. And right now, the numbers are brutal.

The latest Curia Taxpayers’ poll has National sitting at 28 percent, roughly ten points down on their election night result.

That’s not a wobble. That’s a warning siren.

If that number turned up on election night, National wouldn’t just lose. It would collapse. List MPs wiped out. Senior figures gone. Careers over.

And yet Luxon fronted up on Friday night and said he’s going nowhere.

He insists he understands the economy. He insists the plan is working.

“A little bit,” he says.

Faint praise if ever there was any.

Because the reality is this. The public has largely checked out. The feedback is everywhere, in talkback, in comment sections, in everyday conversations. The impression voters have formed is clear.

They see a leader who looks weak. They see someone who struggles to communicate. They see someone who doesn’t appear completely comfortable in the job.

And worse, his standing with women is terrible.

You don’t recover easily from that.

The danger for National is simple. Luxon is starting to look like electoral poison. Go into the next election with him and the risk is obvious. Gaffe after gaffe, mistake after mistake, a campaign constantly on the defensive.

The tragedy here is that none of this should be a surprise.

National MPs can read polls. They know exactly where they are. Yet the caucus has been paralysed by caution.

This is one of the most timid National caucuses in decades. Frightened to stand for anything. Frightened to make a call. Frightened even to debate the obvious.

So they do nothing.

And Luxon staggers on.

If they lose the next election with him in charge, they cannot say they were not warned. They will have only themselves to blame for getting stage fright when it mattered most.

Here’s the key question. If 28 percent is not bad enough to force a conversation, what is?

Twenty six? Twenty four? Twenty five?

What exactly are they waiting for?

Some in politics say it is too late to change leaders before an election. That argument does not stand up to history.

Look at Labour in 2017.

Andrew Little looked at the numbers and realised it was not working. He stepped aside, put the party ahead of his own ego, and Jacinda Ardern took Labour into government.

That is what leadership sometimes requires.

Luxon appears to be taking the opposite approach. From the outside he looks tone deaf to the predicament he is in, putting personal pride ahead of the wider cause.

Meanwhile the political landscape is shifting.

National is trending downwards while the centre left is gaining ground, despite what many on the right see as deeply unattractive alternatives.

On the left you have the Greens pushing massive new taxes. Te Pāti Māori pushing ideas that many voters find radical. Labour led by a leader who already lost once.

Yet despite all that, the centre left is rising.

That should terrify National MPs.

Because if voters are drifting back to that line up, it tells you something very simple. They have stopped believing National can deliver.

And then there is the economy.

Luxon’s entire political future rests on it.

If inflation stays down and voters start feeling better in their pockets, he might still pull it off. Economic recovery fixes a lot of political problems.

But global shocks do not ask permission.

Rising conflict involving Iran, and the knock on effects on fuel, transport and freight, could easily push costs back up again. For a country like New Zealand, sitting at the bottom of the world and heavily dependent on global trade, those shocks hit hard and fast.

Households feel it almost immediately.

And when the cost of living rises again, voters rarely blame geopolitics.

They blame the government.

That is the political reality Luxon faces.

He can say the media is overreacting to polls. Politicians always do. But at 28 percent, it is not media hysteria. It is a serious story.

And behind closed doors, everyone knows it.

Because caucus rooms are far more ruthless places than newsrooms.

If National MPs start believing the economy is slipping away and the election with it, the conversation will change very quickly.

Politics runs on one brutal rule.

MPs protect their own seats.

If they conclude Luxon cannot win the next election, loyalty will not fade slowly.

It will disappear overnight.

That is why the next six months matter more than anything Luxon says at a press conference.

The economy will decide his fate.

And if global shocks derail the recovery New Zealand desperately needs, Luxon may learn something every Prime Minister eventually discovers.

Sometimes the job decides your future for you.

Not you.

And if National does lose the next election, both Luxon and his caucus will be left asking the same question in the mirror.

Should we have acted sooner?

By then, of course, it will be too late.