Aug 13, 2026 · 21 min · 8 segments
Only four months after the previous caucus vote, National MPs were urgently called back to the capital amid fresh leadership murmurings in the media. Once again, Christopher Luxon emerged from the…
Jesse CorlettHost
Ben CravenHost
Really only one thing to talk about this week and that is the National Party confidence vote that's just happened in caucus after a couple of days of speculation about Luxon's leadership.
It's come around again, hasn't it? Feels like this is getting to be a semi-regular occurrence, certainly more regular than you'd like for a sitting Prime Minister.
After a couple of weeks that certainly were not Luxon's strongest, right? He had a couple of gaffes.
We'll all remember that he ruled out Opposition Party but did so with clumsy enough language that his own office had to later clarify that he was ruling out the Opportunity Party.
Then we had these now famous comments about the business community, likening them to children, saying we need to be adult, adult, adult, landed like a cup of cold sick.
And finally he's on Newstalk ZB answering questions from the public and he just floats a constitutional referendum on the voting system, having not spoken to anybody, springs out on his caucus and his colleagues and later apparently has apologised to his colleagues for basically landing them in it.
So he's made these, you know, he's had a couple of flubs and so this kind of reignited speculation
about Luxon's leadership.
A vote was called by Luxon because there was some leadership, you know, kind of speculation swirling around and he survived it.
But now only four months later, in an election year, as a sitting prime minister in his first term.
It's all becoming a bit tiresome as well, isn't it? I mean, I think this time around, the comments from MPs and actually some MP adjacent figures, some stalwarts of the National Party, haven't been as sort of definitively, yep, I support the Prime Minister.
Really only one thing to talk about this week and that is the National Party confidence vote that's just happened in caucus after a couple of days of speculation about Luxon's leadership.
It's come around again, hasn't it? Feels like this is getting to be a semi-regular occurrence, certainly more regular than you'd like for a sitting Prime Minister.
After a couple of weeks that certainly were not Luxon's strongest, right? He had a couple of gaffes.
We'll all remember that he ruled out Opposition Party but did so with clumsy enough language that his own office had to later clarify that he was ruling out the Opportunity Party.
Then we had these now famous comments about the business community, likening them to children, saying we need to be adult, adult, adult, landed like a cup of cold sick.
And finally he's on Newstalk ZB answering questions from the public and he just floats a constitutional referendum on the voting system, having not spoken to anybody, springs out on his caucus and his colleagues and later apparently has apologised to his colleagues for basically landing them in it.
So he's made these, you know, he's had a couple of flubs and so this kind of reignited speculation
about Luxon's leadership.
A vote was called by Luxon because there was some leadership, you know, kind of speculation swirling around and he survived it.
But now only four months later, in an election year, as a sitting prime minister in his first term.
It's all becoming a bit tiresome as well, isn't it? I mean, I think this time around, the comments from MPs and actually some MP adjacent figures, some stalwarts of the National Party, haven't been as sort of definitively, yep, I support the Prime Minister.
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