Ryan Bridge: Luxon needs a game plan to deal with Winston

Luxon’s stuck. Poor old Luxon, he's stuck between a rock and a hard place really, isn’t he? And it's only going to get worse as we head into next year.   Just when he's done dealing with David Seymour on the Treaty Principles Bill - he never wanted to go with but agreed to get into government. That was shut down on Thursday and now the fire kicks off - he's having to hose that down too.   He's been hosing it down since last Friday now.    That's Winston and his big noting about how to deal with Trump, right.   The phone calls that Luxon hastily arranged to avoid being in the House for the death of the Treaty Principles Bill are the same phone calls that have now started this tussle with Winston?   He just can't win.   Either way, there's coalition land mines to step on.   Here's the thing, Winston first made these comments last Thursday.   He said Luxon should have called them or whatever the words were.   So, he should have just picked up the phone, called them straight away, squared it off, have it out, whatever, move on. Instead, you're trying to announce a tourism boost at Sky City on Monday and it's still dragging out.  Some journalist in the press conference yesterday even asked Luxon whether he'd apologised to Winston Peters. For goodness sakes, what an outrageous question.   For the record, Luxon gave a speech basically saying he supports free trade. Big deal we all do.   Then he calls a couple of world leaders he's met and tells them he likes free trade. Big deal, guess what? That's fine because he's the Prime Minister.   That's actually his job. He is the boss.   Winston's just feeling a bit left out over in Tonga obviously, so he's running his mouth off.   What does Luxon do?   Does he just have a private call and hope that Winston calms down? Or does he take a harder line in public with Winston? Call him out?   Tell us he's only the Foreign Minister, not the Prime Minister, and he should stay in his lane.  Whatever the strategy, he needs to figure it out quick smart.  As I wrote about at the weekend, Winston's only just getting started.   There's an election to fight next year and he'll be unshackled from the Deputy PM reins next month.   Then it's all on for young and old.  And Luxon this week has been warned. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.