The week the National coup rumour went into overdrive – Thomas Coughlan

The only ones who seem to be enjoying it are the parliamentary security guards, who get decent overtime and are becoming connoisseurs of a good filibuster. Credit to Labour’s Arena Williams, who put up one of the most entertaining filibusters of the year, attempting to amend a reference in a bill changing emissions standards from “four years” to “three years”. Failing that, she tried for a more specific “1095 days”.

Unsuccessful in that effort, she proposed changing the same four years to an even more specific “26,280 hours”, while another proposed changing it to “156 weeks”.

The final amendment was the best, suggesting the House replace “four years” with “94,608,600 seconds”.

Even the minister in the chair, an exhausted James Meager, had to concede it was “most impressive in terms of the mathematical ability of Ms Williams”.

Bored MPs, trapped at Parliament with nothing but a whiskey bottle to keep them company, are liable to talk. This talking is even more dangerous because the Parliament bar, Pint of Order (now better known by the sick-making acronym Poo – did no one think of that?) is not required to stay open when Parliament is sitting, a change made some years ago, but which continues to rankle MPs and journalists.

MPs go back to their offices and talk. There’s only one thing National MPs are talking about this week, and it’s the challenged position of the Government: behind in some polls, and no longer trusted on the economy.

Commentary has shifted negatively, giving MPs plenty to talk about. Conversation inevitably shifts to one topic: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s leadership.

His position is not as precarious as the chatter around it suggests. But that’s not enough to stop people talking. The chatter has spilled out of National and to its coalition partners, who think something is up, but don’t know what it is. They’re concerned that the major coalition partner might suddenly implode, destabilising their Government. MPs in support parties have resorted to asking the media what is going on inside National, unable to source the information themselves.

Rumour upon rumour upon rumour like a bloody marriage of Chinese whispers and Cluedo – let’s call itCoupdo.

Who’s offing the PM? Why, where, with what? How about Maureen Pugh in Copperfield’s with Paul Goldsmith’s taiaha? No? Try again.

There isn’t a formal alternative candidacy. There isn’t a formal coup. Senior MPs and figures with support are dead set against a change, not because a better leader cannot be found, but because change is itself destabilising.

Goldsmith, reliant on the list to reenter Parliament, favours stability. Powerbroker Judith Collins is loyal to the Prime Minister. Nicola Willis, the deputy leader, also favours stability too.

Party polling is a lagging indicator. It is the last thing to move. Polls now reflect a slow economic recovery that, after a pretty good December and March quarter, was devastated in the three months to June.

The Ipsos Issues Monitor this week, showing the coalition on the floor in the public’s view of its overall performance and National behind Labour on issues like the economy, the cost of living and managing government debt. It made for plenty of bad headlines for bored, exhausted, and, let’s be honest, at times half-cut backbenchers to read in between extended House duty calls.

National’s internal polling is less worrying. The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll, which has data released only to members, has National ahead on the economy by 10.8 points. National’s internal polling has it ahead 12 points on economy, spending and debt and just ahead of Labour 33 to 31 in the decided party vote stakes.

National’s internal polling has the party confident the debate about Labour’s CGT will start to play negatively for Labour too. The Nats poll on which party voters trust most on tax, a metric which National began falling behind on after Treasury published warnings about challenges to the long-term fiscal position (voters intuited that National would hike taxes to plug the hole, they think).

Now, the CGT is registering negatively on the “quadrant” of what drives someone’s vote (whether it is a salient issue and whether it makes people think positively or negatively about voting for a party). This means the CGT is both highly salient to voters and, in this polling, driving them away from Labour. It probably doesn’t hurt that National has spent a considerable amount of money attacking the CGT in the weeks since it was revealed.

National has recently brought back Sancrox (formerly Fleetwood) Political Advisory, the firm founded by Isaac Levido, an Australian Crosby Textor alum who headed Boris Johnson’s overwhelmingly successful 2019 British general election campaign as well as Rishi Sunak’s overwhelmingly unsuccessful 2024 sequel.

Levido is a totemic figure on the right (his name, in the UK, was famously changed to the tune of the White Stripes’ song Seven Nation Army by party activists). He’s been personally involved in the latest round of advice National has received, which has been mostly positive. Perhaps not Johnson 2019, but not Sunak 2024, either.

National is beginning a reset. This weekend, the party will announce a party (as opposed to Government) policy. It’s quite the about-face.

As recently as November 3, when the Herald asked, “When will the National Party start releasing actual policy?”, Luxon replied, “This is rich, coming from an Opposition that’s had four policy announcements in the last two weeks and every single one of them has been an absolute debacle. I mean, like, it’s incredible.”

The party bigwigs see a clear path to victory. They think the economy turning around is going to help them get there. They do not see a case for change.

If there were, Chris Bishop is the person rumour puts at the top of the ticket. Erica Stanford, progressive, and seemingly well-liked, would be deputy, shattering years of National Party tradition of having a liberal and a conservative at the top of the party.

That’s one reason the change might be unlikely to fly, at least at the moment.

Bishop and Stanford might think they can lead the party together. National’s still rather conservative backbench, until recently, dubbed the “Taliban”, probably has other ideas.

The other big challenge is where this would put Willis, Bishop’s friend and closest political ally. A National Party struggling to accept two liberals at the top of the ticket will not accept three. Willis, tied to the economy that has been the source of the Government’s woes, might need to go from that role, freeing up a portfolio for a conservative.

This, on top of the fact that the coup would eject Willis from the deputy position, would probably destroy one of the strongest friendships in contemporary politics.

Aside from friendship, it would also carve off Bishop from his closest ally. If Bishop is going to mount a coup, then for the first time, he’ll be flying without the partner he trusts most – and if that coup were to be successful, it would wreck Willis’ career, to say nothing of their friendship.

This goes against National Party lore that Bishop and Willis, while deciding their moves in the days after Judith Collins was removed as leader, came to some kind of arrangement to support Christopher Luxon and work out some kind of succession between them. The lore casts this as a knockoff Granita Pact, the succession deal agreed at Islington’s Granita restaurant between British Labour leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on who would go on to lead the party.

The local version (aspects of which are denied) is the Puffin Pact, named after a popular Wellington wine bar where the two spent part of the weekend before Simon Bridges dropped out of the race and Luxon was anointed leader. The other, more likely version of the story is that the agreement was less about succession and more about how to block Bridges’ leadership bid to secure a future for National’s liberals. Bishop, at that point in the race himself, needed to drop out to avoid splitting the vote and allowing Bridges to seize the leadership.

James Meager, he who was so impressed by Arena Williams’ numbers this week, has been suspected as Bishop’s numbers man – actually, not so much his numbers man, but an ear to dissatisfied MPs who might be willing to contemplate an alternative. This too is met with strong denials. Meager favours stability, like almost everybody in the caucus.

What is going on?

The roadblocks to a Bishop coup are immense. He has only three weeks before Parliament rises for the year, saving Luxon’s leadership until at least Waitangi. In those three weeks, Bishop will unveil his RMA reforms, which may well be his single greatest legislative legacy. Would he gamble all of that on a coup with uncertain success?

Probably not. Which is why this week’s rumour mill has been so unusual. Bishop isn’t the most full-throated of Luxon’s defenders, and if there were a coup, Bishop would be an obvious candidate. Those two facts are the smoke to this most peculiar fire. Those facts do not, however, make a coup.

These Chinese whisper rumours passed through the funhouse mirror of political conspiracy (to mix metaphors), with National thinking that NZ First is asking around about the potential coup to keep the media fixated on National’s instability. NZ First is privately assuring National it’s going after Labour’s vote (hence this week’s pledge to repeal the Regulatory Standards Act, a Labour promise). In fact, NZ First, as ever, is going after National’s vote too. The theory here is that an unstable National Party could see some National voters head NZ First’s way.

There is yet another rumour (variously denied and confirmed by people close to the action) that Peters reminded Bishop’s alleged camp that his theory of coalition agreements is that they are between the leaders that signed them, in this case himself and Luxon. This theory was borne out almost 28 years ago to the day, when on November 4, 1997, the day after Jim Bolger announced he would resign and be replaced by Jenny Shipley, Peters said he was uncertain whether his party would continue to support National in Government.

It’s unclear what, if anything, Peters has said this time. People not a party to the talks think the rumour is being spread to elevate NZ First’s support at the expense of National’s. Another person wondered whether Peters really would walk away from the coalition and risk a term in opposition after a tough election, another wondered whether a snap election with a new National leader might not be the worst thing.

It’ll certainly give MPs plenty to talk about when they return for the final sitting block of the year, which – if the heavy order paper is anything to go by – will be comprised almost entirely of Tuesdays.