Friday 17 December 2021

Luxon’s Tough Assignment.

Your Mission, Mr Luxon: Christopher Luxon has yet to say or do the things necessary to shake loose sufficient support to make a Centre-Right government a believable proposition. Winning back that substantial chunk of Act support that represented little more than Centre-Right voters’ sheer exasperation with National’s seemingly incurable political ills is an important first step, but it does not take the party all that far.

FRANKLY, I thought the National Party would poll a lot higher under its new leader, Christopher Luxon. For the past week or so I have been shocking family and friends by predicting the first post-Luxon poll would put National/Act about 5 percentage points ahead of Labour/Green. To my surprise, however, David Farrar’s Curia Research has informed its client, the Taxpayers’ Union, that National/Act continues to trail Labour/Greens by 7 percentage points. Not the result that either National, or Act, was hoping for.

Sure, National has shot up by 6 percentage points to 33 percent. The problem, however, is that Act’s support has fallen by 5 percentage points. In other words, the elevation of Luxon has churned the Centre-Right vote, but it has not grown it. Well, not yet anyway.

That was not supposed to happen. The idea behind putting Luxon – as opposed to Simon Bridges – into the top job was simple: to lure back a substantial number of the 413,000 former National voters (mostly women) who defected to Labour in October 2020. Luxon, as a middle-aged, obviously successful, professional manager was intended to signal to all those other managers and professionals out there in “Punterland” that “National is back”. Back from where? Back from the bizarre electoral cul-de-sac into which its past three leaders had, either inadvertently or deliberately, driven it.

Farrar’s numbers make it brutally clear that, so far, this plan has failed. Luxon has yet to say or do the things necessary to shake loose sufficient support to make a Centre-Right government a believable proposition. Winning back that substantial chunk of Act support that represented little more than Centre-Right voters’ sheer exasperation with National’s seemingly incurable political ills is an important first step, but it does not take the party all that far.

In this respect, comparing Luxon’s first moves with the first moves of his mentor, Sir John Key, is instructive. Whether it be his speech to the Burnside Rugby Club, or his bold foray into McGeehan Close – situated in the heart of Helen Clark’s electorate – Key’s direction of travel was unmistakable. Alarmed National hardliners dubbed their new leader’s politics “Labour-Lite” – completely failing to grasp that this was exactly the message weary Labour supporters were supposed to take from his actions.

To all those New Zealanders alarmed by how close Don Brash came to winning the Treasury benches on the strength of his controversial Iwi/Kiwi campaign, Key was determined to present a very different political narrative.

Highlighting the years he spent growing up in a state house in working-class Christchurch. Deploring the growth of a Māori and Pasifika “underclass”. Visiting the state house tenants of McGeehan Close and inviting one of their daughters, Aroha, to join him at the 2007 Waitangi celebrations. All of these moves were calculated to persuade potential supporters that it was okay to vote National again. Sparking a devastating race war was well-and-truly off the agenda.

There has been little sign, so far, that Luxon understands that if he’s to narrow the yawning gender gap that has opened up between Labour and National, then he’s going to have to do something very similar. Indeed, the new National leader’s declaration that the voters he’s most keen to woo are farmers, businesspeople, and the middle-class, strongly suggests that he simply doesn’t get it.

Okay, farmers and businesspeople are definitely worth having, but there’s not the slightest doubt that National and Act already have them – and they are nowhere numerous enough to carry the nationwide Party Vote.

What’s more, Luxon’s statement shows scant understanding that the “middle-class” has for several decades now been bifurcated between what the French political-economist, Thomas Piketty, calls the “Brahmin Left’ and the “Merchant Right”. Once again, Act and National have got the Merchant Right wrapped up. And, as before, there just aren’t enough of them to guarantee an election win in 2023.

From somewhere, Luxon has to recruit his own variation on Key’s “Waitakere Man” and (more importantly) “Waitakere Woman”. The sort of voters who thought Key and the working-class, self-improving solo-mum, Paula Bennett, were their kind of Nat. Attracting the support of that kind of voter will not be made any easier by Labour’s caricature of Luxon as the sort of Bible-Basher who gets off on telling other people – especially women – what to do with their own bodies.

Tough Assignment.


This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 17 December 2021.

7 comments:

John Archer said...

Most importantly, is Luxon going to do more than Labour to reduce NZ’s output of CO2 and methane, and to increase the capture of CO2 from the air? For the future of young people, all other policies are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

To be honest,I thought Judith Collins would be exactly the sort of Muldoon - like person that National were looking for. She even looks a little like a female version of Muldoon. I was wrong. I also thought that once they got a leader that at least looked competent that the ACT party would start losing ground pretty quickly. I think I'm also wrong about that.

The problem with Luxon is partly that he lacks John Keys easy smarminess, and he's had absolutely no political experience much at all. At least DL had engaged in some sort of public speaking/debating/lawyering activities which gave him a bit of a boost in the house.

I was also thinking that perhaps at least some of the more conservative right might have figured out that a businessperson isn't necessarily a great politician given the evidence of Trump. I was wrong about that – not doing too well here am I?

And of course New Zealand doesn't have the large reservoir of public school educated fuckwits like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Nigel Farage to choose from. For which I suppose we should be reasonably grateful, considering how little they contribute and how stupid/spoiled they are. So who's left? Pretty much unknowns and nonentities. Which of these is Luxon? I guess time will tell.

I did have some idea that his fundagelical Christianity might turn people off as well. H's fumbled it a bit, but he hasn't made it into an issue yet. So I don't know. If he does make it an issue, will conservatives swallow the dead rat? Are New Zealanders ready for a prime minister who believes most of us are destined for hell? I suspect many don't care, but it certainly pisses me off a little. Again I guess time will tell.

Hetzer said...

Agree with your thoughts, but very very early days I would have thought.

No doubting the size of the mountain that Luxon has to climb, but time is on his side aided by inevitable tide ebbing out of any incumbant government.

Also Luxon will be aided by Labour doing so much of the heavy lifting required, by their own incompetence.

Unknown said...

Thanks for this interesting blog Chris. One possible outcome of a resurgent National Party would be that Labour may have to enter a formal coalition with the Green Party after the next election - that would be good for our environment, and provide a proper, practical conscience for Labour to get on with its climate change promises. So although a man like Luxon is a sad joke in the context of current New Zealand politics, he may still inadvertently do some good.

Anonymous said...

And....I don't think it was very smart walking around downtown AK stating that Auckland should now be in a green traffic light and the border with Australia should open before Christmas.

swordfish said...

"to lure back a substantial number of the 413,000 former National voters (mostly women) who defected to Labour in October 2020."

Minor point ... but I don't think 413k Nats defected to Labour at the last Election.

Certainly true to say that well over 400k people who cast a Party-Vote for National in 2017 deserted the Party in 2020 ... but they didn't all swing to Labour.

Based on Jack Vowles 2020 Flow-of-the-Vote % stats from Vote Compass ... I've calculated the 2020 Raw Vote flow away from National:

Around 265k former Nats switched to Labour in 2020.

Just over 160k moved to ACT.

With much smaller numbers swinging elsewhere ... mainly to the New Conservatives & into Non-Voting.

(small counter-swings in the opposite direction [from various Parties back to National] only slightly compensating for their huge loss of support).

Trev1 said...

I heard Chris Luxon on the Kerre McIvor show this morning when he took questions from callers on a wide range of topics from COVID management to the economy and race relations. He was very impressive indeed and will easily outshine Ardern in any debate. We can expect Ardern's media stormtroopers to ramp up their attacks on him in the New Year.