last poll in February<\/a>, National was on 34% and Labour on 32%. Luxon\u2019s preferred prime minister rating was just 20%, the same as Labour\u2019s Chris Hipkins.<\/p>\nParty whip<\/p>\n
The Herald reported Stuart Smith, MP and party whip, could not contact Luxon during the last sitting of Parliament two weeks ago to communicate the views of National MPs.<\/p>\n
But a spokesperson the Prime Minister said: \u201cThe PM has a busy diary, but is always available to MPs. He spent the day with Stuart on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/transport-minister-chris-bishop-photo-rnzmark-papalii-Y7FXFXCTFVC5ZIGFDFKQ7WZR2E.png\")
<\/p>\n
Chris Bishop said he was not aware of any moves to remove Luxon. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n
Senior MP Chris Bishop, who faced a partial demotion in Luxon\u2019s cabinet reshuffle earlier this month, has previously been rumoured to be behind a potential coup. He told Newstalk ZB this morning there was no coup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not trying to upend the party, that\u2019s not happening. No, there\u2019s no coup happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said to his knowledge there was no one within the party trying to unseat Luxon. He accepted that everyone wants the party \u201cto do better\u201d.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including new rumours about Christopher Luxon facing a leadership challenge, and Victoria Beckham addresses her family feud. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
‘Frustrated non-ministers’<\/p>\n
Political commentator Liam Hehir, who was formerly active in the National Party, told Breakfast he was aware of \u201ca group of disgruntled MPs\u201d and \u201cfrustrated non-ministers”. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve talked to a couple of people – not just MPs – but certainly some MPs. It is true that there is a group of disgruntled MPs who do think this, but there\u2019s a couple of really telling things. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not aware of any of them actually being ministers. So, of all the names that were mentioned to me, they were all sort of people whose careers had stalled, they\u2019d kind of been a bit disgraced, and haven\u2019t become ministers or aren\u2019t current ministers.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said there was \u201cno sort of leader to it\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is certainly a sense of frustration with these MPs, including from people who you would ordinarily think of as challengers to Luxon. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause actually while things aren\u2019t great for National in the polls historically, and certainly National won\u2019t be happy where it\u2019s polling, the overall polling for the coalition has actually stabilised quite a bit over the last month.” <\/p>\n
Hehir said there was a \u201csense of frustration that there are some MPs in the party who are putting their own frustrations above the possibility of the Government being re-elected\u201d. <\/p>\n
A Talbot Mills Research poll obtained by Stuff yesterday showed Labour on 36% – up 1% – while National had fallen again and was 7% behind on 29%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s leadership is under renewed pressure due to poor polling, it is being reported this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11508,11507,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-383102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-christopher-luxon","9":"tag-national-party","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}