There were unconfirmed reports last night that National caucus members were calling for a special meeting, possibly tonight, to consider the party’s leadership.
One source said the party had already planned a virtual caucus meeting on Wednesday on other matters but that MPs now wanted that brought forward.
Texts to the party’s Chief Whip, Stuart Smith, seeking to confirm whether a special meeting was being planned went unanswered.
But multiple sources last night said the leadership had been discussed in phone calls all through Monday.
These appear to have been at the initiative of Defence Minister Chris Penk, who was calling colleagues yesterday about the leadership.
One source said the plan was for Penk to be a stalking horse for the real contest that could involve Chris Bishop, Nicola Willis, Erica Stanford and possibly even Simeon Brown.
What did seem clear last night was that at this stage there is no clear replacement if the decision is made to dump Leader Christopher Luxon.
The most obvious would be either Infrastructure Minister and Chris Bishop,(a reference to Bishop being Leader of the House was incorrect. He was replaced by Louise Upston in April) but Finance Minister Nicola Willis also has a strong following.
It is not clear whether Education Minister Erica Stanford would want the job, but unlike Bishop and Willis, she is from Auckland and has a strong following there.
The problem is that all three are liberals.
That may be why Penk is playing such an active role; he is not a liberal but nor is he a hardline conservative.
In 2017, Penk told Newsroom that he describes himself as socially moderate – “within the broad church of the National Party I’m probably more towards the conservative end, but I’m always prepared to think about issues as they arise.”
One source suggested that National could break with New Zealand political convention and have two women, Willis and Stanford, in the two top jobs.
That may have been given some oxygen with the pictures of Willis and Stanford making an education and jobs announcement together last Friday underneath one of Wellington’s wind turbines.
As POLITIK reported yesterday, there was a resurgence in leaks about the leadership over the weekend after what Luxon himself conceded had been a challenging week.
That has led to concerns among some in Wellington that the pressure is coming from the party’s hard right.
Certainly, groups like the Taxpayers’ Union have been offering Luxon little public support.
He told RNZ Morning Report yesterday that the next National Government could consider raising fuel taxes and introducing an accommodation levy.
The Union’s CEO, Jordan Williams, tweeted: “National – that party whose only path to victory is smashing Labour on tax… is now squishy on tax.”
The argument for dumping Luxon is simply that, as last week showed, he lacks the political smarts to be able to think of the political implications of what he says off the cuff.
Thus, he somehow turned a perfectly defensible argument about the respective roles of government and business into what was perceived as a dump on business.
Then he sprang his call for a referendum on MMP, a substantial constitutional proposal, on a party and caucus whom he clearly had not consulted on his idea.
That followed his earlier sudden announcement that he would not form a Government with Opportunity.
Stanford yesterday said that Luxon had made clear “he apologises to us” for his MMP comments.
That hardly helped.
There is a concern within the caucus that under the pressure of the campaign he could say anything.
But perhaps his biggest issue is that the public keeps telling the MPs that he is not relatable.
The MPs will be hearing this at the moment as they go door knocking in the lead-up to the campaign.
However, the argument against change is a powerful one.
There have been only two changes of a party leader close to an election over the past 90 years.
In 1990 Labour replaced Sir Geoffrey Palmer with Mike Moore just over seven weeks before the election, and the party also replaced Andrew Little with Jacinda Ardern just over eight weeks before the 2017 election.
The Moore replacement was chaotic and Labour lost in a landslide.
Ardern’s, which seems to have been planned some weeks before it happened, was better organised and though she went on to form the next Government Labour still got fewer votes than National in the election..
The fact that there is no clear successor to Luxon suggests that the planning that went into the Little-Ardern switch has not taken place within National.
However, we are currently 13 weeks from an election, further away than either Moore or Ardern when they took over, so there is more time for whoever might become the new leader to get their act together.
The worst scenario for National is that the caucus divisions become obvious and that Luxon retains his leadership.
There are also the coalition partners to be taken into account.
ACT Leader David Seymour has never seemed all that impressed with Luxon, nor has New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
Peters would find it difficult to work with either Willis or Stanford, but Seymour could probably work with any of the three.
What both coalition partners would want is for the change to be as least disruptive as possible, which would mean they would not want deliberations over any replacement to take too long.
Though the events of yesterday are a surprise, in many ways, a move against Luxon has been a long time coming.
The public has never really warmed to him, nor have many caucus members.
The big question, though, is who can do better.
