Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins do not agree about a lot, but they were likely unified on one front on Wednesday. Minutes after the National Party leader staged his 52-second press conference to announce that he was still the National Party leader and Prime Minister, the Labour Party leader sent out a press release proclaiming the whole exercise a ‘‘circus’’. Mr Luxon would likely agree wholeheartedly, although he would do well to recall he was the ringmaster who picked out the site and pitched the tent under which this latest three ring leadership extravaganza played out. While it is almost certainly true that many members of the National Caucus, despite their public professions of loyalty to Mr Luxon, harbour grave doubts about his leadership — media speculation about the top of the electoral ticket does not appear out of thin air — no-one had publicly launched a leadership bid. This week is a recess week, MPs are away from Parliament, and plotting did not seem to be afoot. Mr Luxon evidently felt otherwise and after the press caught wind of murmurs of discontent he hauled all his MPs back to Wellington after calling the second confidence vote in his leadership to be held this year. As a former chief executive, Mr Luxon should know that there is a limit to the number of times that you can do the political equivalent of fronting the board and demanding that they back you or sack you. He has now got away with it twice, but having to continually restate that you have the backing of Caucus fuels rather than dampens down the perception that that confidence is far from whole-hearted and full voiced. Wheeling out his senior ministers, including likely main rivals Erica Stanford and Chris Bishop, for a ‘‘party unity’’ photo op is not going to fix that problem. Mr Luxon was already under plenty of pressure: he has an election to win in three months. This latest exercise feels rather like an acrobat who has already finished 90% of a difficult routine adding an extra somersault to their performance in an attempt to try to really impress the audience. Whether Mr Luxon has nailed the landing will be up to the voters, who may view the whole performance as having been a clown car rather than Cirque du Soleil. There are certainly several red noses and pairs of oversize shoes to hand out following this latest failed coup. If there was indeed a svengali, or svengalis, plotting in the dark against Mr Luxon, having failed twice to achieve their ends they certainly look more clownish than Churchillian. Assuming Mr Luxon knows who those people are, he must now decide whether to fire any of them or not. Doing so would again cast doubt on the unanimity of backing for Mr Luxon, but nor can he allow rivals to plot against him with impunity. Mr Luxon closed his remarks yesterday by saying that ‘‘we’re going back to work”. That job did not get any easier after the events of the previous 24 hours.
