Luxon facing leadership pressure from within party - reports

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's leadership is under renewed pressure due to poor polling, it is being reported this morning, with those in his party who believe he should go apparently set to make their move in the coming weeks.

The New Zealand Herald said moves to replace Luxon as National Party leader could happen within the next fortnight.

And Breakfast’s Tova O’Brien has been in contact with a National MP who told her the numbers are probably there to unseat him.

However, the MP told her the preference is for him to stand down rather than for him to be rolled.

“Nobody wants blood to spill,” they said. There was no desire to take the focus off Finance Minister Nicola Willis and her response to the oil crisis caused by the Iran War.

“Anything other than him [Luxon] stepping down would be a nightmare and he knows that,” the MP said in a text.

Luxon facing possible leadership challenge after bad polls - watch on TVNZ+

Poor polling is understood to be the driving factor with poor results in recent months threatening the future of National MPs at November’s election and potentially putting the party out of Government.

All eyes will be on the latest 1News Verian poll on Monday evening. In the last poll in February, National was on 34% and Labour on 32%. Luxon’s preferred prime minister rating was just 20%, the same as Labour’s Chris Hipkins.

The Herald reported Stuart Smith, MP and party whip, could not contact Luxon during the last sitting of Parliament two weeks ago to communicate the views of National MPs.

But a spokesperson the Prime Minister said: “The PM has a busy diary, but is always available to MPs. He spent the day with Stuart on Tuesday.”

Senior MP Chris Bishop, who faced a partial demotion in Luxon’s cabinet reshuffle earlier this month, has previously been rumoured to be behind a potential coup. He told Newstalk ZB this morning there was no coup.

“I’m not trying to upend the party, that’s not happening. No, there’s no coup happening.”

He said to his knowledge there was no one within the party trying to unseat Luxon. He accepted that everyone wants the party “to do better”.

Political commentator Liam Hehir, who was formerly active in the National Party, told Breakfast he was aware of “a group of disgruntled MPs” and “frustrated non-ministers".

“I’ve talked to a couple of people - not just MPs - but certainly some MPs. It is true that there is a group of disgruntled MPs who do think this, but there’s a couple of really telling things.

“I’m not aware of any of them actually being ministers. So, of all the names that were mentioned to me, they were all sort of people whose careers had stalled, they’d kind of been a bit disgraced, and haven’t become ministers or aren’t current ministers.”

He said there was “no sort of leader to it”.

“There is certainly a sense of frustration with these MPs, including from people who you would ordinarily think of as challengers to Luxon.

“Because actually while things aren’t great for National in the polls historically, and certainly National won’t be happy where it’s polling, the overall polling for the coalition has actually stabilised quite a bit over the last month."

Hehir said there was a “sense of frustration that there are some MPs in the party who are putting their own frustrations above the possibility of the Government being re-elected”.

A Talbot Mills Research poll obtained by Stuff yesterday showed Labour on 36% - up 1% - while National had fallen again and was 7% behind on 29%.