Luxon says he’s got the full support of his caucus, but the leaks tell a different tale

Friday, 17 April 2026

ANALYSIS: “I have the full support of my caucus.” - Christopher Luxon, April 17, 2026.

Those are words a politician always tries to say confidently, but if they’re having to say them it’s often not true.

Luxon rolled out the line no fewer than nine times in his six minute media conference on Friday, which was almost entirety focussed on threats to his leadership.

A new wave of coup chatter sparked up on Friday as news broke that Luxon had avoided requests for a chat from his chief whip, Stuart Smith, who was attempting to warn him of flailing support among his MPs. Stuff has verified with a caucus source that this is the series of events they understood to have occurred.

Smith was doing his job, as a channel between MPs and the leadership.

There’s a school of thought that Luxon did not understand it that way, and viewed Smith’s communication as an act of disloyalty.

The disloyalty was more on display on Friday. As this story made its way to the public, both Smith and junior whip Suze Redmayne went to ground. They didn’t comment on the story. They didn’t deny it either. The whips would not voice any support for their leader.

Sources within the National caucus are telling Stuff that MPs genuinely don’t know how the next week or two is going to play out.

One MP said Luxon no longer has the numbers to back him in caucus, but neither does anyone else. Effectively, if there was a vote as to whether to keep him on, there is a feeling that he would lose. But it’s unclear who would then take the reins.

While National MPs seem to have an appetite to change leader, none of them have managed to coalesce support around a replacement for Luxon.

In the absence of a formal challenger, the status quo reigns. Luxon retains the leadership until someone can get enough support behind them for a run.

Stuff has been told that there’s no real momentum, or caucus campaign. MPs are not yet formally “doing the numbers” - calling each other to sound out support - but there are a lot of assumptions being made about who is in what camp.

The camps are difficult to pin down. The sides seem to be stability vs change, rather than Luxon vs challenger.

So who’s behind the leaks?

None of the MPs speaking about dissatisfaction with the leadership will put their name to it publicly.

This is not abnormal, but their cloak of anonymity delivered Luxon his strongest moment during Friday’s media stand up. He challenged those MPs to come and stab him from the front rather than the back.

“Can you tell me who they are,” he asked, when faced with questions about what MPs were saying, anonymously, about him.

“Who are they,” he inquired.

What’s going to happen next week?

A caucus source has told Stuff that MPs were astonished that polling and leadership issues have not come up in recent caucus meetings, with many expecting them to be raised given how much had spilled through leaks into the public.

Another MP told Stuff the leadership issue had come to a head and would need to be addressed at next Tuesday’s caucus meeting because, if nothing else, the constant stream of speculation surrounding Luxon’s leadership was untenable.

That didn’t necessarily indicate that any vote or challenge would take place, but there needed to be a proper airing of issues. This could take the form of MPs being read the riot act about discipline and unity, or it could take the form of MPs getting their chance to put their issues to the prime minister.

One MP told Stuff that they believed the movement against Luxon was being inflated by a small group unhappy with him. Another indicated Luxon had lost enough support that he would no longer have the numbers to win a confidence vote.

A key factor in this would-be coup is there are two distinct generations of the National Party in Parliament: Those who wear the scars of the 2018-2021 coup-upon-coup era, and those who watched from afar and sailed in once Christopher Luxon had pieced the fractured caucus back together.

It’s been said that those who weren’t part of the bad years may be more keen to see a change, but haven’t learned the tricks of the coup trade so may not be able to organise effectively enough to pull anything off.

As for Luxon’s support, there are many senior ministers who bore witness to the bloodbaths who are loyal to the leader. There is, though, a question mark as to whether their loyalty is to Luxon himself, or more the notion of loyalty to the leadership as a concept.

Who else would be leader?

The number one name being pitted against Luxon in public is Chris Bishop, the Hutt South MP and self-described “political animal”.

Bishop’s plot spilling into the public sphere at the end of last year has cast him as Luxon’s nemesis and a traitor.

We saw how Luxon felt about that in his recent reshuffle, in which he ejected Bishop from the powerful roles of Leader of the House and Campaign Chair - a clear attempt to kneecap Bishop’s power within the party.

But Bishop is not the only candidate.

Erica Stanford is often floated as an alternative. She seems to rate better among the public than MPs, though, and is seen by many in caucus as not a team player.

Then there’s the wildcard scenarios. In politics, it’s often harder to determine who your friends are than who your enemies are.

In Australia, Malcolm Turnbull was repeatedly white-anted by Peter Dutton, who challenged him for the leadership, only for Scott Morrison, the man who’d faithfully stood behind him and said “I’m ambitious for him” to steamroll through the middle and surprise everyone. Don’t discount a similar plot as a possibility.

Nicola Willis or Mark Mitchell might just slip out from behind him.

What happens to the coalition if they roll Luxon?

Another aspect for the National Party to consider is the stability of government.

Unlike leadership changes in Opposition, they not only have the very big business of governing a country through a fuel crisis to consider, but how their coalition partners may react to any change of leadership.

The coalition has managed to hold it together and work better than many, myself included, predicted.

Luxon likes to take a lot of credit for this but insiders have told Stuff the relative stability comes despite his leadership, rather than because of it.

Any calculation being made to potentially change to leadership will need to factor Winston Peters and David Seymour into the equation.

Seymour has fewer cards to play on this front - he’s likely to try and project the position of “the adult in the room”, calling for stability and cool heads.

Peters cannot be predicted.

He indicated prior to Christmas that he would expect to be consulted on any change in leader of the National Party, because he signed an agreement with one person: Christopher Luxon.

“You expect people who were behind that person at the time of the shaking of hands would respect that,” he told RNZ.

“It’d be unwise to have a spill on unless you spoke to somebody else in terms of the continuance of the government.”

The last time a PM was rolled in office - Jim Bolger, Winston Peters was there in coalition too. He fell out with the new PM Jenny Shipley who sacked him from Cabinet for taking a position against selling shares in Wellington Airport and failing to adhere to cabinet collective responsibility.

Many view the coup as the beginning of the end of that government - Peters said late last year he made the deal with Bolger, not knowing the party would roll him for someone “massively inferior in skills”.

Peters’ poll results are stratospheric - it’s not just his party that’s coming in with 15% in that latest Talbot Mills, it’s him in the preferred prime minister stakes too.

The prospect of him negotiating his way to a stint in the prime minister’s chair should no longer be looked at as Wellingtonians conjuring up political fan-fiction.

If there’s shakiness in leadership, or a weakened National Party to negotiate with, expect Peters to make his case that he deserves a turn.

We know those who were negotiating on his behalf tried back in 1996 to convince Helen Clark and Jim Bolger of a shared prime ministership, that didn’t fly. But last time round he did manage to broker a sharesies arrangement with David Seymour for the Deputy spot.

When will this all be over?

At the moment, the regular Tuesday caucus meeting is building to be the ultimate showdown.

But National MPs will be on the phones all weekend long trying to avoid a messy blood-letting.

The tidiest way to change the leadership is for a group of MPs to show up with the numbers and for Luxon to resign.

If Luxon is confident he’s got the numbers and wants to put it to bed once and for all, he could call their bluff and call a confidence vote. The risk in this is, of course, he could lose it, and that would open one hell of a messy coup.

As for the agitators, the time is now. If they don’t put up in the next couple of weeks, they’ll need to shut up. Until after the Budget, at least.