There’s a word for the NZ PM’s leadership win this week: Pyrrhic. The phrase comes from Pyrrhus of Epirus, who defeated the Romans in two battles between 280 and 279 BC. Pyrrhus won, but at the cost of so many men, that he stated that another one more such victory would be the end of him. The Romans, meanwhile, despite suffering more casualties than the Greeks, had a larger pool of replacements to come back with, which they duly did, finally smashing the Greeks 130 years later at Corinth.
Those who forget the lessons of the past, as the saying goes, are condemned to repeat them: 130 years was a long time even in the Classical world, but it wasn’t nearly so long as a few months in politics. Chris Luxon may have won for now, but, as Cam reported, here on the Good Oil, “he’s really the loser”.
Winners do not face repeated challenges. John Key never had one. Helen Clark never had one while she was prime minister. Luxon has now faced three credible public challenges since November and two formal confidence votes. Winners do not get dragged into Wellington on a recess week so their MPs can abandon policy launches in Auckland and regional deals in Queenstown.
As Cam says, we will never know the exact number. The previous count (which, to be fair, counted one MP more than National actually have) indicated that Luxon was just a few votes from being rolled. But if it was anywhere near the same tally this time, the message is blunt: nearly half of his own government don’t want him at the helm. That alone is damning stuff. In 1971, Australian PM John Gorton, was hit with a leadership challenge that resulted in a dead heat. Gorton used his deciding vote against himself, saying that such a close vote was not a vote of confidence at all.
Luxon, take note.
He should take note, too, of the first leadership challenge against Bob Hawke, in 1991. Hawke won comfortably, with 66 votes to challenger Paul Keating’s 44. But it was a classic Pyrrhic victory. The very fact that there was a challenge at all amounted, as Gorton said, to no vote of confidence at all. Bear in mind, too, that Hawke had been in unchallenged leadership for seven years and eight elections. There was a strong ‘it’s time’ factor working against him, as well.
By contrast, Luxon has been in power for just three years: a single term. The fact that Luxon has had three challenges already in that time is damning in itself. These are not votes of confidence in a strong leader.
In Hawke’s case, like the Greeks of Antiquity, it was a victory that was the end of him. Like the Romans, Keating merely bided his time and came back stronger than ever, defeating Hawke 10 months later. In the interim, Hawke was subjected to the daily humiliation of seeing his once closest ally sitting on the backbenches with a smirk.
Even when his time did come, Keating’s victory was not quite the emphatic vote of confidence he would have hoped for. Like Luxon, he was just three votes from having his arse handed to him. He only won the election in 1993 solely by having the good fortune of facing a charisma-deficient Liberal wonk who made the great mistake of being honest about his policy platform.
The plotters against Luxon don’t have 10 months to bide their time. They have less than three months. If they’re going to move against their leader again and actually capitalise on a putative honeymoon, the next challenge will have to be in weeks, at best.
Is that likely?
Chris Penk has taken the fall for the latest challenge, but rumours of simmering discontent are not abating. Already, Erica Stanford has been forced to grit her teeth and make a declaration of support. Even if it included the ludicrous claim that “The caucus is 100 per cent united behind the prime minister.” As the simple fact of not one, but three leadership challenges now shows, the caucus is very far from united. Certainly she was not united behind the PM on Tuesday night. Chris Bishop has also been forced to deny he was working on numbers in the background. Even so, his words were curiously qualified: “We had a confidence vote in the prime minister’s leadership, which he won, I believe, decisively, and we’re unified behind him”.
He believes Luxon won decisively? Maybe it’s a matter of reading too much into too few words, but that hardly sounds emphatic. Indeed, the very fact that Luxon won’t release the numbers indicates that the win was not that decisive at all.
Still, if another plot is in the offing, the plotters are going to have to move fast. In the meantime, Luxon is having to face an election with the spectre of knives hovering just out of sight, which is hardly going to help an already floundering National.
Like the Greeks, Pyrrhus’ latest victory may well be beginning of the end of them.
