Once a broad political church, the National Party has become a house divided against itself. New leader Christopher Luxon faces huge challenges uniting both the party and its wider congregation.
New Zealand’s National MPs are set to elect their fifth leader in just four years to take on Jacinda Ardern’s government. What “habits of the unsuccessful” should they avoid in their next leader?
Representative democracies require functional governments but they also need strong oppositions. At the moment, New Zealand has one of these things but not the other.
Simon Bridges’s attack on New Zealand’s ‘wokester’ police commissioner might work as politics, but it fails to grasp the nature of policing in an open society.
New Zealand’s COVID-19 elimination strategy has been a collective success, involving ‘ordinary’ Kiwis and unity across political divides. Ending lockdown and a looming election will test that unity.