Mike Munro: National Party worried as Christopher Luxon fails to fire with voters

National Party leader Christopher Luxon has been sliding in the polls. Photo / Alex Burton

OPINION

It was only a matter of time before suspicions that die-hard Nats are getting jittery about Christopher Luxon’s ability to get their party over the line in October began to get some validity.

This week we got a wee reveal on the state of the party psyche.

A newspaper column by party grandee Philip Burdon, a five-term MP who served in Jim Bolger’s Cabinet, exposed a mood of unease that has probably been lurking among the party rank and file — and maybe the caucus, too — for a while.

Burdon, certainly, didn’t hold back: on policy and leadership, National “lacks the precision and appeal of other parties”. The party is trying to be all things to all people. It’s adopting increasingly soft positions on issues, and runs the risk of being seen as “out of touch with provincial and rural New Zealand”.

And then the clincher: Luxon has “conspicuously failed to personally inspire the electorate”. If his falling popularity continues, “it will become a dangerous negative”.

Luxon actually bucked the sinking trend this week. Thursday’s 1 News-Kantar poll saw his preferred PM rating rise by a single percentage point, to 18 per cent. Compare that, though, with the mid-20s numbers he was registering a year ago.

In the run-up to last Christmas, when he marked his first anniversary in the job, Luxon was getting credit for uniting the National caucus and leading a revival in the polls, so much so that the party overtook Labour.

The portents were bright. That wasn’t surprising, given the muddle the Government had got itself into on a number of fronts.

Christopher Luxon has 'conspicuously failed to personally inspire the electorate', a former National Cabinet minister claims.

A cost of living crisis, businesses doing it tough, a clutch of Covid-related grievances that continue to linger, the health system wilting under pressure, public dismay over ram-raiding youths running amok — surely National are odds-on to knock Labour off its perch?

You wouldn’t bet the house on it, despite National edging back ahead of Labour in this week’s poll. And the reason you wouldn’t wager your house is Luxon’s continuing failure to touch the imagination. He’s keeping Labour in the race.

After last year’s progress, this wasn’t the way 2023 was supposed to play out for National.

Of course, much has changed since the start of the year. There has been Jacinda Ardern’s exit, Chris Hipkins’ slipping comfortably into the prime ministership, the jettisoning of unpopular policies and the beginning of an election-year spend-up by the Government.

Meanwhile, Luxon’s struggles show no sign of abating.

He had a miserable Budget Day, delivering a forgettable Budget Debate speech that essentially recycled his trademark attack lines, and then copping the fallout as National vowed to restore the prescription charges that Grant Robertson had just announced the end of. National’s only Budget-week policy was the promise of a receipt for every Kiwi, showing where their taxes are spent.

Luxon is seen as lacking authenticity, being out of touch (47 per cent subscribed to that view in this month’s Newshub poll) and prone to making mistakes. So the question that inevitably arises is that if he cannot demonstrate competence as leader of the Opposition, why would he make a competent Prime Minister?

In the places where National’s party faithful come together to survey the political landscape, you get a sense that the conversation won’t be about what sort of PM he would make, but simply whether he can win.

It will be causing them anguish that a prize that seemed within their grasp a few months ago is, for the moment, feeling as though it’s still some way from being secured.

Neither of the major parties likes losing. That’s to be expected, but with National, you sense the distress of an election defeat is more deeply felt. There’s a reason the Left deride them as born-to-rule Tories.

National is often characterised as the natural party of government, and the historical record shows why. In the postwar era, the party has spent far more years in government than out, Helen Clark’s prime ministership being the only time in the past 70 years that they’ve spent three terms on the opposition benches.

So the prospect of a third term in opposition, particularly in light of all the strife and upheaval of recent times, is insufferable, and has the grandees asking, how can this be?

Which brings us back to Luxon’s leadership.

It’s most unlikely they would move to dump him, unless National’s support tanks alarmingly. Because the last thing the party wants is the painful rupture of another leadership change. The great damage inflicted by the Bridges-Muller-Collins leaders’ parade in 2020 has not been forgotten.

If his personal numbers keep deteriorating, Luxon, of course, might fall on his sword, but with an election victory in October an even chance, that too is improbable. He gives the impression of being well-endowed with self-belief, someone for whom the prime ministership is a Holy Grail that must be seized.

So as National heads into election season, promising little, it hopes that economic gloom will lengthen the odds on Labour surviving, and it hopes that Luxon can begin to show that he has the wherewithal to lead a Government.

Hope is a useful mental buffer when dealing with uncertainty, but it’s not something you hang an election-winning strategy on.

In Russia there’s an old tale about hope.

It tells of a peasant who gets money to feed his starving family by promising the Czar that he can get his dog to talk within a month. If he fails, he’ll be executed. When the peasant’s wife hears about this she is greatly alarmed and scolds him. He explains that the Czar is so burdened with problems that he may forget about the promise, or become unwell and die, or get distracted by a new war.

“And who knows,” the peasant says, “maybe the dog will say something.”

In sticking with Luxon, National is hoping the dog will talk.

- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.