1News Politics Producer Tom Day reflects on where an extraordinary day in Wellington leaves the National Party.
Well that was a colossal waste of time, wasn't it.
National MPs have tried twice, maybe even three times, to oust the Prime Minister and each time have failed spectacularly.
It's even more extraordinary considering that National is continuing to poll badly, around the 29-30% mark, and that Christopher Luxon has had two of his poorest weeks on the job.
But for Luxon it is something of a triumph to survive two votes. Each time he has out manoeuvred his opponents by bringing forward discussions that have given the plotters against him little time to work with.
But that doesn't mean in the past 48 hours he has always been in control.
Some MPs refused to back Luxon on their way into Wellington on Tuesday night, just saying they had no comment. It doesn't take much to say you have confidence in the Prime Minister but a handful simply couldn't manage it.
Erica Stanford was the most striking. When she arrived at 6pm, she walked with purpose, refusing to answer if she had plotted against the Prime Minister and if she had confidence in him.
If she was canvassing support for a challenge, it's clear at that stage she felt she couldn't publicly express support for the PM, despite doing so just days earlier.
Today she put out a statement saying the Prime Minister has her "full support, as he always has". That it took her a matter of days to say so is particularly telling - only after all the chips had fallen did she publicly say she backed him.
Back to Tuesday night. By the time the next round of flights started to arrive, the message from some MPs was different.
Paul Goldsmith and Mark Mitchell strongly backed the Prime Minister. Nicola Willis, while not as strong, reaffirmed her statement earlier in the day that she had confidence in him.
But that didn't mean all other MPs were as outwardly loyal.
The party's Chief Whip Stuart Smith was asked countless times whether or not he would back the Prime Minister and he simply said he had no comment.
It got so far down the track I reminded him his job was to whip up support for the Prime Minister and he couldn't even say he backed him himself.
Later on Greg Fleming and Dan Bidois arrived together on the final flight.
It created an incredible contrast where Bidois said he backed Luxon but Fleming couldn't do the same thing.
Also on that 10.30pm flight was Chris Penk.
It would be the first of his many public denials that he was plotting against the Prime Minister.
Penk would later challenge for the leadership in caucus.
He lost.
While it may be portrayed by other potential leadership contenders like he was a lone wolf, it's a position that no one around the halls of Parliament believes.
If he was working on behalf of Stanford or Chris Bishop then Penk has paid the ultimate price.
He's lost his job as a minister, and now even as an MP, all in a matter of hours after he came to the conclusion he couldn't go on.
That's an incredible fall from grace for someone who has been pretty highly regarded as a minister. To have your career all over in half a day is pretty brutal.
But how did it come that? Let's backtrack a few hours.
MPs arrived at Parliament ahead of the 9.30am caucus meeting.
All spoken to by 1News publicly backed the Prime Minister saying they had confidence in him, including Penk.
But the damage was already done.
The saga had dominated headlines for days and as Mark Mitchell would later admit National will take a hit in the polls because of it.
Some social media commentators have described the past week as being driven by the media.
But perhaps they should start with the National MPs that have continued to leak against the Prime Minister thereby destabilising his leadership.
Luxon may have survived for now and he will now probably lead National into the election.
But it makes it hard for the public to trust his leadership if it's clear that some of his own MPs don't.
He has a major turnaround job to win back some of their support and probably the public's too.
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