Henry Cooke has done a profile of new MP Christopher Luxon. The article headline raises a very good question: “Is Chris Luxon the new John Key, or the new Todd Muller?”
The article then goes on to show what an arrogant, self-centred, wanna be if he could be fellow this Luxon chap is.
“Husband, Father, former business leader, sports addict, and now a Member of Parliament.”
This is not a particularly bad Tinder profile, it’s the first sentence of a paid ad that was shown to tens of thousands of Kiwis all around the country on their Facebook in recent weeks.
The text sat above a photo of new National MP and former Air NZ boss Christopher Luxon striding the steps of Parliament, the Beehive glowing behind him.
Luxon is not the only National MP to run ads promoting himself as a local MP, but he is in fairly small company – and his fellow Facebooking colleagues usually mention their electorate, not just themselves.
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Ouch! I’m sniggering about the Tinder reference, though a better reference would have been to Ashley Madison.
But what a blowhard. Henry Cooke goes on:
But Luxon is not like other MPs. Other MPs don’t have coffees with gallery reporters weeks after arriving in Parliament. Other MPs don’t pop up in preferred prime minister polls. And other MPs certainly don’t appear alongside John Key on shows that openly speculate about them being a “John Key Mark II”. All this before delivering his maiden speech.
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All mouth and no trousers. Luxon has clearly ignored the advice my father gave him when asked by Luxon about what he should do as an MP. Dad told him that he talked too much and that he should use his ears and his mouth in the ratio that God gave them.
That Luxon clearly wants to be prime minister is hardly interesting. Most of the 120 former head boys and girls currently crammed into Parliament House have at least idly daydreamed about the art they would hang on the ninth floor.
The difference is in intensity and possibility: After heading up a huge company Luxon isn’t the kind of guy who would settle for the relatively rewarding life of being a mid-bench MP or tourism minister – and his path to power is a bit more obvious than it is for most other people.
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This is why most business leaders fail at being a politician. This is especially true of former CEOs. I expect Luxon will crash and burn too. Not for him the hard grind of parliament. He’s a flash Harry, but his problem is that he’s sold himself too early and he has 33 other MPs who think they’d be a better leader than him.
Making things happen in Wellington – in government or out of it – is not a skill one can pick up in a Ted talk or from an MBA.
You need strong relationships with allies in Parliament and the public sector, political instincts honed from years of close observation, and a deep understanding of the dirty work that goes into getting a department more money, or a new law rushed through all of its stages.
Luxon, of course, was the chief executive of a company that is 51 per cent owned by the state, so he will have seen plenty of politics close at hand. His relationship with Key will also mean he has a steady stream of solid advice should he want it.
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But good leaders know how to listen, Luxon is the type of guy who fills the silence with his pearls of wisdom. He’s National’s new FIGJAM.
He’s also very likeable, although there’s a bit more of a sense that he can turn the charm on and off than you get with a Key or Ardern, who are always on.
A bit of time getting to know Parliament is also exactly what he needs. Timing is everything in politics. If Judith Collins were to resign as leader tomorrow Luxon would be one of the main contenders to replace her, probably facing off against the Simon Bridges redemption narrative and maybe one of the liberals who backed Muller. But it would be far too early: either to become leader or to lose a leadership contest.
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Lol. Bridges cuts a lonely figure in parliament these days. He spends more time stuffing his face and working out the next cheesy social media post than anything else.
Becoming leader too early can be very punishing. Muller and Collins both took on the party ahead of an unwinnable election last year, yet they handled the mantle very differently.
Muller resigned over a scandal with Hamish Walker he easily could have survived, after letting it fester for days. Collins came in and immediately killed that scandal by firing someone – she was a veteran, and it showed.
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Why Todd Muller continues to warm his seat is baffling. His hubris clearly outweighs his humiliation.
Christopher Luxon should also take the advice given by Sir Robert Muldoon to a young back-bencher, Maurice Williamson when he told him that back-benchers should learn to breathe through their ears in order to facilitate keeping their mouths shut.
If he can do that then he might not ever have to explain his Chinese donor problem or his other social media activity.
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