John MacDonald: Luxon can't do what he should do

Christopher Luxon is in a hell of a bind. Because he is dreaming if he thinks sacking Defence Minister Chris Penk is going to be enough to get National back on track. But if he did what I think he should do after that shambles of a leadership challenge yesterday, things would come to a complete standstill. Because he’s not just running a party. He’s also running the government and there’s stuff the government has to keep on doing. And you need ministers, capable ministers, to do that. But if Christopher Luxon wants us to come anywhere close to believing that he has a caucus capable of holding itself together and not falling apart at the next hurdle, then he needs to go further than just sacking the Defence Minister. If he wants us to believe that, after what happened yesterday, he’s anything more than a lame duck leader, he has to sack Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford too. Because with those two still lurking around, he’s talking out of his backside telling us that they’re all happy and united and stable. He’s also talking out of his backside saying that Chris Penk has been given the heave-ho because he was the one who wanted to be party leader and prime minister. It’s nonsense. Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford were the ones who wanted Luxon gone. But they were so pig-headed about it and were fighting against each other as much as they were fighting against Christopher Luxon. Stanford wanted to be boss. And so did Bishop. The person who has come out of this looking like the good guy is Mark Mitchell. There was talk that he was another one wanting Christopher Luxon gone. But he told Newstalk ZB this morning that that was nonsense. He also said he was 110 percent certain we won’t see this happening again and seems very confident that National will recover from this, saying the party isn’t “mortally wounded”. Obviously, he isn’t going to say anything otherwise. But there’s no way we can look at National now and think they’re anything close to stable, with Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford still sitting around the Cabinet table. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.