Luxon’s leadership meltdown is now consuming National
The Christopher Luxon leadership crisis has spiralled from caucus grumbling into outright public panic — and the Prime Minister’s decision to blame the media for reporting on leaks from his own MPs has only made National look more chaotic, paranoid and politically brittle.
The audacity of Luxon blaming the media over his leadership woes is Trump level delusion.
It was his MPs who were leaking to the media!
He then declared there were five MPs moaning and complaining.
He was the one avoiding his Whip, and he ultimately called for a vote.
Blaming the media for doing their job which is to put these questions to him isn’t their fault, this entire fiasco is his blunder!
You can’t blame piranhas for attacking you if your’ve put on togs made of bacon!
Luxon’s biggest problem is that nobody believes him anymore
Either the PM didn’t understand the ramifications of allowing the issue to drag on or he really is so arrogant he refused to acknowledge them.
There are rumours that Luxon believes in himself so much, he now refuses to hear any negativity.
That’s the false confidence of a tall man in a short village. He has a misplaced sense of self esteem thanks to his evangelical faith.
He’s managed to make a train wreck crash into a school bus while colliding with a pet shop.
While National squabble over who is the captain of the Titanic, NZ’s economy falters and collapses because the free market experiments National are applying are failing.
Kiwis are turning against National because they are going backwards in terms of quality of life.
For the PM to march off in a tantrum and refuse to answer questions yesterday was embarrassing.
The fiasco of nonsense National have attempted to put forward to explain why their Whip was coming and then not coming to a crucial vote is laid bare ruthlessly by Thomas Coughlan at the Herald...
It was obvious something was afoot on Tuesday morning when Luxon skipped the longstanding convention of speaking to reporters before his caucus meeting. Luxon’s office also issued a statement on behalf of whip Stuart Smith saying the MP would not be at caucus, “due to a longstanding personal appointment”.
This was curious as on Monday night, Smith told The Post he’d been trying to fly to Wellington but had been delayed by the weather and intended to get to the city on Tuesday morning.
By Tuesday morning, however, he had not arrived on any of the flights into Wellington. It appears he had decided to stay put for this “longstanding appointment” that for some reason had been scheduled at a similar time to the standing Tuesday morning caucus meeting, one of the most important engagements for a whip.
Smith also put out a statement commenting on a story that broke in the Herald on Fridaythat he had sought a meeting with the Prime Minister to communicate Luxon’s flagging support in caucus. Luxon did not respond to that request and the meeting never took place.
The story was attributed to four sources, including multiple MPs.
The statement came after days in which Smith would neither confirm nor deny the story and during which Luxon claimed not to know about the episode, while also saying it was not true.
On Tuesday, Smith said he “did not contact the Prime Minister or his office seeking a meeting”.
This got heads scratching.
Why issue a half-denial after days of refusing to comment? And can it really be true that Smith, hours after confirming he was trying to fly to Wellington, discovered he had a longstanding personal commitment (potentially in a different island – Smith represents the South Island electorate of Kaikōura).
There are other questions. On the tiles, Finance Minister Nicola Willis reiterated the longstanding National Party position that only the scrutineers of the vote (usually the whips) know the actual outcome. This means no one should know whether Luxon won the vote unanimously or by a single vote.
Yet in the House, Luxon affirmed he had the unanimous support of caucus members. The Herald has good reason to believe this isn’t the case.
What is going on?
National MPs seem frightened.
…none of this stands up to any scrutiny whatsoever.
National’s economic story is collapsing alongside Luxon’s authority
Panic and fear seem to be driving decisions because they know that things aren’t working out economically and Trump’s illegal war in Iran has stamped flat any possible green shoots of recovery in time for the election in November.
Now five National MPs have been named as the problem, their careers are gone and they have nothing to lose by leaking even more!
Winston’s threat and warning to National highlight his capacity to knife the entire coalition by calling a snap election.
Luxon has tied himself to the mast of a ship that he’s now going down with.
National will be lucky to have 25% on election night.
Good riddance we need them gone as while this circus is going on we are suffering from flooding crumbling and erosion a poor economy and terrible social outcomes . And we have a government in power that has cut funding for climate scientist, natural disasters and they do not believe in global warming despite all the evidence including the disasters we have been regularly experiencing in our country.