Comment: “I could be well moved, if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am constant as the Northern Star,” Julius Caesar tells a group of Roman senators, in William Shakespeare’s eponymous play, while refusing to grant their request.
He is then promptly stabbed to death.
On Wednesday, the National Party caucus attempted a reenactment of Julius Caesar – but, at the last moment, having surrounded the emperor and drawn their knives, the conspirators lost their nerve.
This is no victory for National. Instead, it leaves the party, its leader and its senior MPs in their weakest collective position since the dark days of Judith Collins’ leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Where Christopher Luxon could plausibly claim to have emerged from the abortive April coup stronger than ever, having stared down “moaning and frustrated” MPs, that contention does not wash a second time. To have had to call an urgent meeting in the middle of a recess week, disrupting campaigning and interrupting a planned announcement from finance spokesperson Nicola Willis, is a clear sign of weakness.
That it again took three hours for Luxon to feel confident emerging from caucus and declaring success does not inspire confidence. Nor does the long list of MPs who over the 24 hours before the meeting declined to express their own confidence in Luxon – a stark change from April, when he received near-unanimous rhetorical support.
The Prime Minister’s sacking of supposed conspirator Chris Penk does little to rectify this. Penk is not delusional enough to think he had a real shot at the top job. The theory, reported on Wednesday morning, that Penk would act as something of a stalking horse to take out Luxon and pave the way for a true leadership contest between real contenders seems far more plausible. Luxon’s true rivals have not been punished for their role in this.
As for the caucus as a whole, they have now twice tried and failed to rid themselves of their unpopular leader. No more than three in 10 Kiwis have ever preferred Luxon as Prime Minister, but this caucus couldn’t organise itself enough to unseat him.
The attack line Labour will run is obvious: Would you trust this lot to screw in a lightbulb? And if not, why would you trust them to run the country, when they can’t even run their own coup plot?
Indeed, the mood in the Labour Party headquarters will be jubilant this week. This is the best possible outcome they could have imagined. Not only has the National Party descended into another round of internecine warfare, but they’ve ended it by sticking with Luxon, whose unpopularity is potentially driving more support for Labour than any of the party’s actual policies.
The only better outcome would be if, in a few weeks time, as National falls even further in the polls off the back of this latest episode of disunity, yet another coup plot is hatched.
That may seem a ridiculous eventuality, but just a week ago, so did an emergency caucus meeting of the sort held Wednesday. It isn’t likely to play out, but it cannot be ruled out either.
That’s because Wednesday’s drama has failed to change any of the underlying reasons driving some presumably significant minority of the caucus to agitate for leadership change.
It is hard to imagine National rising in the polls in the near term, after what has happened over the past two weeks. Instead, flatlining is perhaps the best the party can hope for. A decline would be a nightmare – every 1.3 percentage points the party drops means another MP out of a job, another ripe recruit for a future conspiracy.
On Wednesday evening, the latest 1News-Verian poll put National at 29 percent and unable to form a government without Opportunity, which Luxon has ruled out. And that was without taking in the full discord that played out over the past 48 hours.
Luxon’s ability to portray strength and authority has been severely wounded by the second attempted coup in four months. He looks even less capable when compared with Labour’s Chris Hipkins, who is still not polling to be returned to power but whose caucus has leaked less than a handful of times in the past three years and backed him publicly and unanimously.
Luxon’s sacking of Penk was a necessity, but means little when there is no punishment for the rest of the disloyalty displayed Wednesday. If, as is widely suspected, Penk was acting on someone else’s behalf, then that person has got off scot-free.
So too the array of National MPs, from backbenchers like Greg Fleming to prospective leadership contenders like Erica Stanford to even the party’s chief whip Stuart Smith, who declined to express confidence in Luxon on Tuesday and Wednesday. Party president Sylvia Wood, even, said nothing in Luxon’s defence on her way into caucus Wednesday morning.
Voters who were concerned that a vote for National might mean more chaos around the Cabinet table, with Winston Peters and David Seymour again calling the shots for three more years, are now adding in the prospect of internal discord within even National over a full term of Parliament.
The failed coup has also weakened the potential leadership aspirants, whether they were truly sounding out the possibility of taking the top job or not. Alongside Penk, Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop in particular have been tainted by the dual stains of alleged disloyalty and incompetence.
One is bad enough. No one wants to be Brutus. But at least Brutus got the job done. We must look elsewhere for an allegory for the bumbling backstabber who plans betrayal but can’t quite execute. Guy Fawkes, perhaps, as a plotter caught before he could commit regicide. Hardly a desirable comparator.
Luxon’s supporters will be quick to point out that, after the assassination of Caesar, things don’t go well for the conspirators either. They attempt to justify their actions to the crowd but are driven from Rome. A bloody civil war breaks out – by the end, the conspirators have all been killed or committed suicide.
Unfortunately for Luxon, however, he is no Caesar, despite the ironclad self-assuredness the pair have in common. Antony’s defence of the murdered emperor – “You all did love him once” – could not be repeated for our unpopular premier. Nor, as we have established, are his senior MPs plausible stand-ins for Brutus, Cassius and the other assassins.
Voters are not asked this election to pick their leaders from among the historical or literary greats. Instead, they must select real humans with real flaws. This week, some of those flaws are more visible than ever before.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Joseph Mooney had not expressed confidence in Christopher Luxon ahead of Wednesday’s caucus meeting.
