\u201cThere will be horse trading between now and 9.30 tomorrow. There will be promises of jobs, loyalties will shift.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, she believed it would be \u201cvery hard\u201d for Luxon to survive the bout of leadership turmoil.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you survive two of these in less than four months?\u201d<\/p>\n
Du Plessis-Allan said she believed Luxon was \u201cvery close to losing the numbers, if he hasn\u2019t already\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have counted by myself three loyal Luxon MPs who have left him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said two of those MPs had joined Erica Stanford\u2019s camp and one had joined Chris Bishop\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Newstalk ZB host Heather du Plessis-Allan said it was too early to predict which way tomorrow’s extraordinary National Party caucus meeting would go. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has lost, by my count, those three MPs, and those are just the ones I know about. He has possibly lost more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper said leadership challenges \u201cnever look good\u201d for an incumbent, particularly after Luxon survived a confidence vote in April.<\/p>\n
MPs told the Herald the April vote was 27-22 in Luxon\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n
Soper believed Luxon would resign if it became clear he had lost the confidence of his caucus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they do have the numbers, then I would imagine knowing Chris Luxon as I do, he would probably do the honourable thing and resign,\u201d Soper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if they don\u2019t have the numbers, he\u2019ll stare them down probably. But it never looks good for a leadership having to fight to the extent that he\u2019s had to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soper sympathised with Luxon\u2019s predicament, describing the controversies that had dogged him as a series of \u201cvery minor gaffes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
He believed the unrest within National\u2019s caucus was coming from \u201cnaive politicians\u201d, possibly encouraged by colleagues who saw themselves as potential leaders.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, senior National MPs Nicola Willis and Mark Mitchell have publicly backed Luxon ahead of tomorrow\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
Willis, the party\u2019s deputy leader, told the Herald she had confidence in Luxon, while Mitchell said he had \u201c100% confidence\u201d in the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has my absolute support and backing,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
Bishop declined to comment on the meeting when approached by the Herald this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Luxon also refused to answer questions about his leadership after landing at Wellington Airport, including whether he was considering resigning or retained the confidence of his caucus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll talk to you tomorrow,\u201d he told waiting journalists.<\/p>\n
Newstalk ZB is owned by NZME, publisher of the Herald. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere will be horse trading between now and 9.30 tomorrow. There will be promises of jobs, loyalties will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6636,16426,30726,31796,6630,6119,15124,6871,305,42,10900,16718,1043,5836,132616,16427,17318,3556,43,10901,18154,13910,2687,312,6639,1529,40,38,41,39,102],"class_list":["post-565454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-challenge","tag-christopher","tag-commentators","tag-deserted","tag-du","tag-faces","tag-fight","tag-has","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-heather","tag-him","tag-leadership","tag-lost","tag-loyal","tag-luxon","tag-mps","tag-national","tag-news","tag-plessisallan","tag-political","tag-previously","tag-saying","tag-says","tag-survival","tag-three","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565454","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=565454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}