So what’s it to be for Christopher Luxon - praise him, bury him or both?

Thursday, 23 April 2026

Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party.

OPINION: In the months leading up to Julius Caesar’s assassination, the Roman Senate showered their increasingly autocratic leader with honours, from a mass oath of loyalty to anointing him Dictator for Life.

Despite those pledges, weeks later 60 senators conspired to stab Caesar to death on the senate floor on the Ides of March, 44BC.

Like Caesar, Tuesday’s caucus meeting is a reminder that any leader who must demand that kind of loyalty doesn’t have it, no matter how much overweening fealty your MPs display.

The fact that Christopher Luxon was forced to put the formal motion of confidence up himself, yet he couldn’t say it was unanimous afterwards is evidence of the precariousness of his position.

Read more:

• The three questions remaining for Christopher Luxon after staring down his critics

• Christopher Luxon leadership: A vote won, not a problem solved

• Christopher Luxon says there are five ‘moaning and frustrated’ National MPs marring discipline

That precariousness, six months out from an election, is blaring like a klaxon in National’s flatlining polling - now entrenched in the 20s/early 30s, its core voter territory.

Add to that the uncomfortable fact that their leader, in the middle of a crisis, continues to lose support in the preferred prime minister stakes. In this week’s 1News-Verian poll, he’d dropped four points to 16, below Labour leader Chris Hipkins at 19 and edging ever closer to the 12% that Winston Peters, the man who’s sucking the political husk out of him and his party, has achieved.

Curia pollster David Farrar told Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter that the biggest chunk of support for NZ First – at 52% - is coming from 2023 National voters. It’s plausible, Farrar said, that NZ First could get 15% of the vote come November 7.

Despite Luxon’s snide comments on Tuesday about media speculation and rumour, those dropping numbers prove that voters have already made up their minds about his leadership. Which, more than anything explains why there’s a direct line of accountability for MPs, from his Cabinet reshuffle just over a fortnight ago to his leadership being imperilled this week.

Three polls - the Taxpayers Union-Curia, Talbot Mills corporate and 1News-Verian have National at 29.8%, 29% and 29.7% respectively. That would mean that MPs in electorates with a 3000-majority could lose their seats.

That would be goodbye to Hutt South’s Chris Bishop, unless he’s high on the list, Wairarapa’s Mike Butterick, Mount Roskill’s Carlos Cheung and Banks Peninsula’s Vanessa Weenink.

None of those are among Luxon’s five “moaning and frustrated” MPs who Mike Hosking, a former foe, now a “friend” - to mark himself out of the media pack - claimed to know.

The only problem with that argument is The Moaning Five hardly fit the narrative of MPs who are certain to lose their seats come November 7.

Taranaki-King Country MP Barbara Kuriger held a 14,355-majority last election, Tauranga’s Sam Uffindell’s was 9370, Andrew Bayly’s was 11,432 which was won in a by-election, while Southland’s Joseph Mooney and Waikato’s Tim Van de Molen’s were respectively, 17,211 and 18,046.

As National Party mates have pointed out, they’re hardly whining because they’re losing their seats, but because they’re advocating on behalf of others who have smaller majorities and are further down National’s pecking order.

At this stage of the election cycle, one thing is certain for the good ship National; it seems destined to make history. If it’s not the party’s first one-term government, then it will be returned weaker in a coalition, the most-junior large party.

There are various reasons why this has happened; on the parliamentary side, there’s the failure to fulfill its 2023 economic promises to the electorate. Then, there’s a party governance system that is top-down, not grassroots-up, that’s lead to the hollowing out of party membership.

It’s more obsessed with garnering campaign contributions than substantially fixing what the electorate has been screaming at it about for nearly three years.

Now National is saddled with a leader who refuses to go, while its caucus – for the moment at least – cowers before his fragile leadership, creating the party’s own self-styled slow-slip earthquake.

And all Luxon can say, dismissively, is, “I get it”.

What’s more, his political security is far from assured. Having survived this week’s tumult, he is now dangerously close to entering the dead man walking phase where his position at the top of the National pile is undercut by a lack of authority and lack of trust in his ability to do the job.

All it will take is another poll pushing National further down the 20s for MPs’ fight-or-flight survival skills to set in and another confidence vote is mounted.

Winston was right; Luxon took the risk now to quell the rebels, but a precedent has been set.

Across the West, political history is littered with the failed hopes and aspirations of leaders who survived a vote of no confidence only to lose their jobs days or weeks later.

And while Luxon hasn’t joined their ranks just yet, he’s facing a fuel crisis, a faltering economy, rising discontent in his caucus, all while trying to win an election.

He has never been in a more perilous position than he is now.