As whip, it’s Smith’s job to keep in touch with the party back bench and act as a conduit between them and the leadership. This was especially important that week as Luxon announced to caucus on Tuesday that he was going to reshuffle the Cabinet, validating the hopes of some MPs and dashing those of others.
Smith could not act as that conduit, however, because he could not get a meeting with Luxon.
The Prime Minister’s office said Luxon has a busy diary. However, in the view of Luxon’s critics, Luxon ghosted his own whip, not wanting to face the truth of what he had to say.
Three sources with knowledge of the event confirmed those facts. Smith is not denying those facts, but not commenting on them either.
That itself is remarkable. Caucus business is sacrosanct.
This morning, Tova O’Brien on TVNZ’s Breakfast confirmed the facts of the story before 8am, just hours after the Herald published. That is remarkable too. The speed is a testament to O’Brien’s sources and journalism, but to me, it suggests you don’t have to look very far to get this information.
MPs are confirming it over their breakfast.
Let’s be honest about what is not known. The Herald has confirmed from multiple sources that the meeting Smith sought was related to Luxon’s ebbing support.
This is not the same as saying Luxon has lost the confidence of caucus. Indeed, it’s not clear he has.
And the meeting Smith sought does not appear to have extended this far – losing support and having lost support are different things.
We know that Luxon’s support has weakened – and weakened considerably, but we don’t know whether it has ebbed away to the point at which he would lose a confidence vote.
But that may not matter.
In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher faced a leadership challenge from Michael Heseltine.
Conservative MPs affirmed her leadership 204 votes to 152, however, that narrow margin was not sufficient to avoid a second ballot under party rules. Thatcher, convinced she could no longer win a second ballot after being so damaged by the first, resigned. A leadership change ensued, the Tories won the next election and governed until 1997.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher survived a challenge but resigned anyway. Photo / AP Images
That may be what we are dealing with here. A leader who may have a majority, but no mandate.
What is the state of caucus?
Well, the person who has been most publicly tipped as a candidate, senior MP Chris Bishop, hosed down that speculation this morning, telling Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast he was “not trying to upend the party” and that “there is no coup happening”.
Other senior MPs, including Mark Mitchell, Todd McClay and Paul Goldsmith, have similarly hosed down speculation of a coup.
But reports of discontent are not hard to find, though no MP has yet plucked up the courage to put their name to their discontent – an act, which in our political system, effectively fires the starting pistol on a challenge.
Back on Breakfast, O’Brien’s sources reckoned Luxon’s support may have ebbed to the point at which he had lost the confidence of caucus completely.
A decent number of people seem to know about this incident, clearly.
The Herald has been able to get close enough to ascertain its veracity.
The Herald has not been able to contact the entire National caucus.
The Herald has, however, spoken to a significant number of MPs and staff. They confirm that Luxon has lost a significant amount of support, but no one knows exactly how much.
If a vote were held in caucus to confirm confidence in Luxon’s leadership, there is a good chance that vote would fail, and Luxon would be turfed out.
But that vote does not take place in a vacuum. That vote, if it were held, would not just test confidence in Luxon as leader, but Luxon as Prime Minister too.
That’s why Luxon probably isn’t keen to hold it and that’s why MPs are so cautious to trigger it.
Just asking for a vote is a significant step.
It’s nuclear enough challenging a leader. It’s thermonuclear to challenge a leader who is also a sitting Prime Minister. It’s only been properly done once in the past 30 years and it didn’t end well. Even asking for a vote is a deeply serious thing to do.
MPs are telling the truth. There is no formal coup planning.
Bishop isn’t running around doing the numbers, and nor, to the knowledge of the Herald, is anyone else.
Back-benchers, however, would very much like them to. (Some frontbenchers, meanwhile, would like the back bench to get in line and hope the virtue of discipline starts to work its magic in the polls.)
What a significant number of MPs want is for Luxon to look at the polls, see the number of colleagues who will lose their jobs, and reckon with the fact that his unpopularity is such that he will find it difficult to fight National into a better position before November.
Seeing this, those MPs would like Luxon to resign, tidily and with dignity.
Caucus would then do its work. Ambitious MPs could then openly put their names forward.
She’s running: Finance Minister Nicola Willis out for a run in Washington DC with other finance ministers.
Could it be Nicola Willis, who is on a tear responding to the fuel crisis, but carries baggage from the sluggish recovery; Erica Stanford, popular with the public and a fresh face, but who has rankled caucus by clearly backing her own staffer in a seat selection over a sitting MP?
Could it be Chris Bishop, who has probably had the best term of any of Luxon’s ministers, delivering wins in housing, planning, and local government, but he’s frustrated Auckland MPs over his championing of intensification and lower house prices?
Then there’s Mark Mitchell. Luxon loyalist, who, if Luxon were to go, might be tapped by him as the leader of the conservative faction.
The other reason MPs keen on change would like Luxon to resign first is that likely challengers may not have a majority on their own.
There is possibly a majority for change, but probably not a majority for a particular type of change. That’s why the decision for change probably needs to come first. This sequencing is another reason why Luxon may be safe.
All of this will come to a head in the next fortnight. The sitting block before the sitting block in which Willis will deliver the Budget, a key test in the confidence not just in the Prime Minister, but in the Government as a whole. The Budget hasn’t yet been to Cabinet, and is likely to be agreed in Cabinet later this month.
National’s class of MPs elected (or re-elected) in 2023. Many would lose their seats on current polling.
Parliament sits for two weeks from Monday. Luxon will need to face MPs. As multiple media outlets reported this morning, MPs keen on a change would prefer that Luxon resign, creating a dignified exit for him, and, perhaps more importantly for them, a dignified way for the next person to assume the leadership.
But resignation does not seem in Luxon’s nature.
So what happens next?
Well, who really knows? You don’t want to challenge the leader of the party unless you’re absolutely sure you’ve got the numbers, and from what the Herald can tell, no one can be absolutely confident that they do. You want a majority and then a margin, because if you fail, your political career is basically over, particularly on National’s current polling, which could see many MPs turfed out of Parliament, particularly if Luxon drops them down the party list.
So the antis might do nothing – they might not have the numbers. In fact, as is often the case in politics “nothing” is often the most baseline scenario.
Luxon has limited options, too.
He must know that even with some support in caucus, his position is weak. He won’t want to test it in a confidence vote for fear of discovering just how weak that support is.
He can’t punish MPs either, because that simply acknowledges that his position is weak enough that there are potential challenges – indeed, punishment might precipitate a challenge.
So he might do nothing too.
As multiple media have now confirmed, the next fortnight will be critical. Nothing may actually happen in the next two weeks – that is a significant possibility. But MPs have confirmed they believe things are going to come to a head soon.
The problem is that while MPs have the numbers to grumble, they might not have the numbers to roll Luxon. If a change is going to happen, it probably needs to happen now or you get into Dame Jacinda Ardern and Mike Moore territory of swapping a leader out very, very close to an election.
Frustratingly for Luxon, the precedent Ardern set by assuming the leadership shortly before the election means that some MPs may continue griping right up until polls open, thinking it a tenable option. This might drag on for a long time.
The next fortnight will be crucial. It’s the time that makes most sense and the time the Herald has been told by caucus that things need to come to a head, and the current fortnight, because of the looming Budget, is when that will happen.
No one has a majority, it seems. And so there is an outside possibility that things limp on, the worst of all worlds: Luxon scared to test his support in caucus, and potential challengers scared to test theirs.
He may limp on – but not forever. There’s an election in November. Caucus votes can be ghosted, general elections, however, cannot be.
An earlier version of this column mischaracterised Margaret Thatcher’s reasons for avoiding a second leadership vote. Thatcher was convinced by colleagues she could not win the second vote having been wounded by the first.