Luxon may be captain but he can’t pick his team

Party rank and file get all the say when selecting the candidates

National leader Christopher Luxon is experiencing the perilous differences between being the boss in politics compared to corporate life: in politics, you have to deal with the hand you’re given — in corporate life, you can deal the hand yourself.

In his pitch to be leader, and subsequent statements on the “reset” of National, Luxon has made much of his ability to develop a strong team.

However, the hurly burly around Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell served to highlight what little power Luxon has in actually picking that team.

Luxon said he did not know of the details of Uffindell’s bullying at Kings College because he recuses himself from any board discussions around candidate selections, and that was proper.

It is proper because National takes great pride in the “democratic” way their selections are done and in that great democracy of the National Party, the members pick the cast — not the leader.

He will not admit it, but all of that must feel counter-intuitive to a man more accustomed to hand-picking the people he wants for positions, and putting them on a performance management regime.

He would give people a year to improve if they were not up to scratch — and then they would be sent packing.

He can now do neither, beyond giving winks and nods for the candidates he particularly wants in the list ranking process and sorting out what roles those MPs will serve under him.

Once an MP is there, Luxon does have power. When push comes to shove, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought about the Maria Dew report into Uffindell. In terms of whether he stayed or was booted, it only mattered what Luxon thought.

But if Luxon decides he doesn’t want Uffindell standing again in 2023, there isn’t much he can do to stop it.

That’s up to the board or the delegates in Tauranga, who may or may not be inclined to take a hint from on high.

National has started the process of selecting its new candidates — and in most electorates, the candidates are selected by the rank and file in the electorate.

If a candidate (especially an incumbent MP) has a strong support base in the electorate members, they have a seat as long as they want it.

Judith Collins, for example, has just put her name in the hat for Papakura again. Even if she is challenged, she is likely to hold it — whether or not Luxon hoped to bring in somebody new.

Luxon appeared to have tried to give her an elegant exit when he first took over. He gave her a seat next to the exit sign and hoped the message would sink in: he placed her at the bottom of his 20-strong shadow Cabinet and gave her a portfolio that did not give her much chance to shine publicly.

It was a hint that she would not be in his inner circle, she would not return to the front bench so she might as well get out without being insulting about it. If an agreement with Act includes Cabinet positions, she is also likely to be pushed out to make room for them.

She clearly, and to the surprise of nobody, thinks she will be redeemed.

Luxon may of course end up being thankful about that. Collins may not be viewed with much affection by caucus after the last election and the self-immolation of her leadership.

But she is a former minister who knew how to get things done. If National succeeds in getting back into Government it will need those — and while it has about six other former ministers, very few had much experience.

It is helpful to have people who know how Cabinet works and how far the powers of ministers extend to be able to hit the ground running.

And that is the question mark that hangs over National: experience.

Yesterday’s Mood of the Boardroom showed there was still some wariness around Luxon for that reason. Act leader David Seymour was still seen as a more effective and experienced operator, while Luxon had a bit of convincing ahead of him.

If business people think that way about one of their own, the voters will also have questions about whether he has had enough time. Yes, Luxon has tightened discipline and order, but people need more than that.

Nor does the experience question mark stop with Luxon. Most of the current National Party caucus is something of an unknown quantity in terms of how they would cope with ministerial posts.

Luxon will have no choice but to use a lot of them in Cabinet. It has 33 MPs — Cabinet takes 20.

Labour knows it is a weak point, because it was in exactly the same position.

It, too, had a very small caucus leading into the 2017 election.

It will try to use that lack of experience to its advantage, just as National did with Labour back then.

Just before the 2017 election, the newly-elected leader, Jacinda Ardern, pleaded with voters who thought she needed more time as Opposition leader to get the experience she needed to put that to one side.

The one who did put that to one side, Winston Peters, later moaned about that Government being the most inexperienced he had ever had to work with.

And at the time, while Ardern didn’t have as much experience as Opposition leader as Luxon, she had a lot more experience as a politician.

Whether running the inexperience line will actually work out for Labour is a different matter, because for all the experience they now have five years later, those business heads were less than impressed with them now.

In the Mood of the Boardroom survey somehow the Green Party coleader James Shaw scored as more impressive with the business end of town than either Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern or Finance Minister Grant Robertson.

That is not good news for either the Labour ministers, or for Shaw, who is already facing internal revolt for not being Green enough.

On the same morning, Shaw was trying to compensate for being clutched to the bosom of big business by joining the students on the Climate Strike. He stuck out like a sore thumb and called for anarchy from them: rolling strikes until the election.