This week's attempted National Party leadership coup quickly descended into disorganised farce. The immediate casualty was not Christopher Luxon as his Caucus detractors may have hoped, but Chris Penk. Despite his repeated denials and public pledges of loyalty to Luxon, he was widely reported to be the stalking horse for at least one of those wanting to depose the Prime Minister. However, he ended up not only failing to achieve that goal but destroying his own promising political career in the process. 

One of the most basic norms of Parliamentary politics is that everything is ultimately about the numbers - the numbers to form a government, through to the numbers to topple a leader. Without the numbers to do things, politicians are impotent and unable to achieve anything, something Opposition parties face every mind-numbing day they are out of power.

Yet that basic point seems to have been either overlooked or not understood by those Caucus members wanting to get rid of Luxon. Making the case against his continued leadership was one thing, made easier by Luxon's recent gaffes, but organising the numbers to make a change became a step too far. With up to four potential challengers, the odds always had to be on Luxon coming through the middle and seeing them off.

His task would have been far more difficult had his critics been able to look beyond their visceral distaste for Luxon's style and agree on a single ticket to make the challenge. The fact they could not says less about the respective abilities of the potential challengers than it does about their competing and uncompromising egos and ambitions, which does not bode well for future Caucus cohesion.

Only once before has National ousted a sitting Prime Minister. In 1997 Dame Jenny Shipley oversaw a Caucus revolt against Jim Bolger while he was overseas, but there were then still two years to run until the 1999 election, not just under three months as at present. The last time National changed its leader this close to an election was in September 1957 when ailing Prime Minister Sid Holland was persuaded reluctantly to stand down after eight years in office to make way for Keith Holyoake (who lost the election three months later).

Nevertheless, despite the unique nature of the current circumstances, there are some wider political implications arising from it. 

The most significant relates to the increasing tendency to look to “saviour” leaders to revive a party’s flagging fortunes and the consequent attraction to non-career politicians to provide the answer. Dr Don Brash, who became National’s leader in 2003 after less than two years in Parliament was arguably the first of these. His backers believed that his background as a respected Governor of the Reserve Bank would equip him to provide prudent, “nonpolitician” leadership, but the experiment did not work.

Brash was toppled as National’s leader in 2006 and replaced by Sir John Key. Key had been in Parliament for just four years, following a successful international business career and became Prime Minister two years later. He is the exception that proves the rule because he quickly realised the difference between a successful external career and success in politics and made the adjustment accordingly.

Christopher Luxon had a similarly successful international business career and enjoyed an even more stellar rise than Key to become Prime Minister after only three years as an MP. But unlike Key, he has seemed unable and unwilling to leave his corporate background behind and transition into being an effective national political leader. Luxon’s language and style always come across as much more akin to that of a chief executive rather than a Prime Minister and often therefore out-of-step with the average New Zealander.

Former Labour leader David Shearer, who was parachuted into the Labour leadership in 2011 after two years as an MP, and following a successful United Nations and diplomatic career, is another case in point. He also failed to make the impact his supporters had hoped for and resigned the leadership after just over eighteen months.

The point arising from each of these examples, which all parties need to contemplate, is that “saviour” leaderships rarely succeed. There is no real substitute for solid, political experience. Luxon’s frequent excuse when confronted with situations that had challenged governments of recent years that he “wasn’t around then” is inadequate and leaves him increasingly looking out of his depth. Unlike Key, who went out of his way to learn the reasons why previous decisions had been made, Luxon always seems not all that interested.

For all that, National has now made the choice to persevere with Luxon, at least until the election. But unlike the aftermath of April’s confidence vote, which Luxon interpreted as an unqualified endorsement of his leadership style requiring no change, there will have to be some changes if Luxon’s professed determination to lead National to victory is to be achieved.

For a start, he needs to understand that MMP is about power sharing between parties of like intent to make government work, not single party domination the way it used to be. In that regard, and in the light of recent polling, Luxon needs to revisit his foolish, precipitate ruling out of the Opportunity Party as a potential post-election partner.

After all, the difference between success and impotence in politics still comes down to getting the numbers.

 

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day” the saying goes.

It also seems you cannot beat Wellington, or at least its City Council, when it comes to public relations disasters.

Earlier this year, following years of mismanagement of and underinvestment in the city’s water system, the Council in conjunction with other local Councils, established a new entity, Tiaki Wai, to better and more transparently manage the region’s water resources. Part of the plan was that there would be a separation between what ratepayers paid for water services and their rates to local authorities, so that they could see more clearly the true cost of water services.

It all seemed reasonable and relatively sensible – which would have been a first in itself for Wellington Councils when it comes to service delivery – until it came to the implementation of the plan. Until that point, ratepayers appeared to have a measure of confidence that with Andrew Little as Mayor, unlike the shambolic regimes which preceded him, the process of change would run smoothly.

But Tiaki Wai and the Wellington City Council have managed to destroy that cautious confidence in one fell swoop. Little had been making some ground with his assurances that the impact on ratepayers’ pockets would be minimised because the removal of water services from the rates bill would lead to a corresponding reduction in rates payments.

However, when Tiaki Wai started sending out its first quarterly water bills to ratepayers late last month, the proverbial quickly hit the fan. Ratepayers were receiving bills for hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars for water services, leaving many to take the Mayor’s continuing assurances of a corresponding downwards adjustment in their coming rates bills with a large, grain of salt.

In recent years Wellingtonians have been paying some of the highest rates increases in the country – nearly 17% in 2024/25 and 12% in 2025/26 under former Mayor Tory Whanau. This year’s rates increase of just under 6%, the lowest for years, looked set to offer some relief until Tiaki Wai came along. It is already projecting that the average household cost for water will rise from nearly $2,400 this year, to nearly $4,000 in 2030/31 and almost $6,000 in ten years’ time.

Faced with these projections from Tiaki Wai’s faceless bureaucrats, Wellington ratepayers have every reason to be sceptical of the Mayor’s assurances on rates relief.

Having said that, most Wellington people know that water services in the capital have been mismanaged for decades and that change and additional substantial investment in infrastructure was long overdue. The frequent bursting of the city’s ancient pipes had made Wellington a bit of a national joke, so it was clear something had to be done.

That is not the problem. Rather, the issue is that Tiaki Wai and its new leadership seem to have gone about their task with the typical insensitivity and blind enthusiasm bureaucrats always show when they consider the cause they are working on more important than the concerns of the public they are working for. And because of that, they have left their political masters with large portions of smelly egg on their faces.

Surely, there could have been better co-ordination between Tiaki Wai and the Wellington City Council about the timing of bills being sent to ratepayers? Why was it not possible to send out the Tiaki Wai bills the week after the Council’s rates demands that people could see that the Mayor’s assurances were being honoured? Did none of the 22 communications staff Tiaki Wai employs and the City Council’s 50 communications staff foresee the angry public reaction that has now occurred and propose strategies to mitigate that? Were they not even talking to each other? And where were the city’s local politicians whose noses might be expected to be more acutely attuned to such things and notice the perception problem they were creating?

Given the performance of both the Council and Wellington Water, Tiaki Wai’s predecessor, over recent years, it simply beggars belief that anyone in either of those organisations could have seriously believed that sending out new, separate water bills in advance of a rates demand that may or may not contain a corresponding reduction in charges would be a winning strategy.

Yet, that is what has happened, and the Council’s response has been ho-hum at best, although admittedly somewhat better than Tiaki Wai’s callously dismissive “we’re just doing our job” response. The Mayor has plaintively repeated his assurances that people will see the full picture and all will be better when they get their rates bill. So far he has done nothing to proactively advance those assurances.

Under the Whanau regime, long-suffering Wellington residents became used to having a Council that was a byword for incompetence. They thought those days were over when the new Council took office last year. The Tiaki Wai fiasco is quickly disabusing them of that notion.

Wellingtonians are proud of the “you can’t beat Wellington on a good day” mantra. But they are far from proud that their city’s leaders continue to make them a national laughing stock by their insensitive and badly managed actions.

 

 

Christopher Luxon's ruling out any possibility of National working with the Opportunity Party after the election is not nearly as emphatic as it sounds.

This time three years ago Luxon was saying his party's strong preference was not to have to work with New Zealand First after the 2023 election, only to end up going into coalition together a couple of months later. In a similar vein, ACT's David Seymour originally specifically ruled out ever sitting around the Cabinet table with New Zealand First Ministers, only to join the post-election coalition because of the perceived greater good of keeping Labour out of office.

Luxon's seemingly unequivocal comments notwithstanding, there is absolutely no doubt National would turn to the Opportunity Party if it needed its numbers to form a government after the election. But there is still a long way to go before that prospect becomes a serious issue.

The Opportunity Party still must get elected to Parliament for a start. Although recent polls show it close to crossing the 5% party vote threshold, it is not there yet. Polls over the next few weeks will show whether the Party's momentum is strengthening on the back of recent publicity, or whether it has peaked and will fall back as there is more scrutiny of its policies and plans. Its most challenging time has yet to come.

It is a high stakes, all or nothing game for the Opportunity Party. If it fails to cross the 5% threshold and does not win an electorate seat (talk about its winning Mount Albert seem fancifully optimistic at this stage) all party votes cast for it will be discarded and therefore essentially wasted.  

This is also the real point behind Luxon's comments this week. Polls show that the biggest chunk – about one quarter – of new supporters for the Opportunity Party are people who voted National at the last election. They may think they are doing National a favour by supporting the Opportunity Party, giving it a potentially more reliable coalition partner than New Zealand First. But they are also voters National desperately needs to entice back into its column. Warning them that their votes will not help the re-election of a National-led government is an important tactic in this regard.

National fears that those voters hold the key to whether the centre-left bloc can get the numbers to form a Labour/Greens/Opportunity coalition that may not therefore need the support of Te Pāti Māori. It also knows that if the Opportunity Party fails to cross the 5% threshold all its votes – including those of previous National supporters – will fall into the electoral waste bin and be ignored.

The former National supporters now favouring the Opportunity Party could add up to 2 percentage points to National's current polling levels, were they to return home. With National polling on average just over 30% in current polls – down from the 39% of the party vote it received at the 2023 election – and the coalition running only marginally of the Opposition bloc in most polls, an uplift of up to 2% in National's fortunes could have a significant impact on the election outcome.

Moreover, if National can reclaim the bulk of those former supporters and the Opportunity Party falls below the 5% threshold, the support it has attracted from former Labour and Green Party supporters will fall into the same electoral waste bin, to the detriment of those parties’ election chances. That is why attempting to engineer this type of electoral outcome was the real reason behind Luxon's comments this week.

But this highlights an important aspect of MMP – that politicians and political parties do not have the control over the system they had previously. Everything they now say or do is constrained by the parties they are working with or seek to work with in government. There are no political absolutes anymore. So, when the Prime Minister said this week that the most important decision at the coming election was which party could manage the economy best, it was a far less absolute statement than when previous Prime Ministers have made similar statements in the days of the First-Past-the-Post system. 

Appearing to rule out working with the Opportunity Party is in a similar vein. It sounds emphatic and clear but is really at best conditional. If the coalition's options after the election are forming an albeit cumbersome governing arrangement with the Opportunity Party or going into Opposition, the outcome will be a no-brainer.

And Luxon's current coalition partners will expect to have just as much say as him in making that decision.

 

New Zealanders have an often-contradictory view about what they expect in their politicians.

At one level, they are frequently dismissive of those they regard as "career" politicians with no real life-experience. They barely tolerate the way they do things because they are just the "games politicians play." They deride all politicians for their perceived caution and tendency to see most situations through their own particular political prisms.

They say they yearn for leaders who will simply get on with the job, and deal with the things that matter to people, rather than keep pursuing their own political agendas. So, when Christopher Luxon came along, with no real political experience, but a solid business background and no apparent desire to morph into a political figure the way his mentor Sir John Key did, he was seen as a breath of fresh air, precisely because he was avowedly "not a politician".

However, despite the superficial appeal of a non-politician experienced business leader running the country, people still expected Luxon to quickly get to grips with the political game and how to play to it, in just the same way they expect players bursting into the All Blacks to immediately know how to play international rugby. Much of the criticism Luxon has faced as Prime Minister is because he has not adapted to his changed circumstances and continues to look, often curiously defiantly, like a political fish out of water.

Yet there remains a public view, despite the Luxon experience, that it takes no special skills to be a successful politician, and that virtually anyone can do the job, regardless of their background. It is the same sort of thinking that lies behind the ACT Party's recruitment of high-profile broadcaster Paul Henry as a candidate.

Without deriding Henry's broadcasting capabilities, it is worth noting that few people with impressive external backgrounds have made the transition to become successful politicians. Key and Steven Joyce would be the obvious examples of recent years, but others are few and far between. 

Henry's selection invites comparison with that of another high-profile broadcaster, Pam Corkery, who was elected to Parliament in 1996 as an Alliance MP. She quit after just one term, saying she found Parliamentary life frustrating and less rewarding than she had expected. Within minutes of his announcement as a candidate Henry was dismissing Parliament as "full of twats", suggesting that he too will quickly feel the same frustrations as Corkery did.

The point external stars recruited to Parliamentary parties often fail to grasp is that Parliament, and by extension government, is an environment unlike any other. It is unforgiving and constant, and its essentially collaborative processes leave little room or tolerance for excessive displays of individualism. That is because Parliament is basically a forum for the expression of diverse opinions, often to the point of tedium, but nevertheless critical to a functioning democracy. The real work of government occurs elsewhere – in Cabinet, its committees and select committees – where once again collaboration and compromise, sometimes accompanied by long and thankless hours of debate, are the order of the day, rather than flashy displays of self-proclaimed individual brilliance.

It could be argued that Winston Peters is the counter-factual to that point. After all, he has successfully carried off flashiness and shameless self-promotion like no other since the 1970s. However, that been less the explanation of his success than his deep understanding and application of how politics works.

And here is where New Zealanders’ contradictory views of politicians come together. They may not like Peters or what he stands for, but they acknowledge him as a skilled political operator. By contrast, in Luxon’s case, while his business background is known, he is not seen as a skilled politician, hence the criticism of him as Prime Minister. Unlike Peters, he is not behaving the way they think a politician should behave.

Corkery and Luxon expected Parliament to bend to their wills because of their backgrounds. Key, on the other hand, quickly worked out that while his impressive background was a significant asset, it had to be tailored to fit the Parliamentary environment, if he was to be successful.

Paul Henry may well to be an attractive vote-catcher for the ACT Party, at least in the run-up to the election, which is presumably why he has been selected. However, experience suggests that of itself is no automatic guarantor that a successful or substantial political career is about to follow.

The rock and the hard place that has defined New Zealand’s foreign policy for the last decade or so is getting ever sharper and more uncomfortable.

Since the thaw in relations with the United States after the 1980s nuclear row, New Zealand has been a reluctant friend. Consistent with what it holds to be an independent foreign policy, New Zealand has supported the United States on some issues and opposed it on others. For example, it provided significant military and operational support to the United States-led Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in the early 2000s but opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 because it had not had the approval of the United Nations.

More recently, New Zealand opposed the United States’ intervention in Venezuela as not in accordance with international law. And although it had forthrightly condemned the recent actions of the Iranian government, New Zealand stopped short of explicitly supporting the United States-led attacks on Iran earlier this year.

While this nuanced ambivalence has served New Zealand’s interests well in recent years, it is easy to see how the United States, especially the current idiosyncratic Administration, might feel that New Zealand is at best a “fair-weather” friend. In this context, the recent comments by the War Secretary Hegseth that New Zealand was “freeloading” off the United States by not more significantly increasing its defence spending, and the new United States’ Ambassador’s expressed “disappointment” at the continuation of our long-standing anti-nuclear policy are not just idle comments. They clearly reflect a deeper United States’ frustration at New Zealand’s continued broadly friendly, but carefully distanced and wary approach to the bilateral relationship.

There are many reasons for this, beyond the anti-nuclear policy, which although still a sore point for the United States is largely a red herring, given the infrequence of nuclear ship visits here prior to the 1987 ban being enacted. For example, promoting two-way trade has long been an issue – from the time then Finance Minister Walter Nash unsuccessfully proposed a “reciprocal trade treaty” during talks in Washington in 1939, through to the more concerted, but equally unsuccessful, attempts from the early 2000s to secure a free trade agreement. Against that backdrop, President Trump’s imposition of “Liberation Day” tariffs on New Zealand’s exports to the United States was a doubly bitter pill for New Zealand to swallow.

Meanwhile, New Zealand’s relations with China have been slowly expanding since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1972. Improved political, cultural and economic links over the years led to a free trade agreement – China’s first ever – being concluded between the two countries in 2008 and ever closer political ties. The free trade agreement has been an outstanding success, so much so that China is now New Zealand’s major trading partner.

But at the same time New Zealand seems to have been none too bothered about being drawn ever more closely into China’s expanding political web, to the extent that successive governments have been almost pathologically scared stiff of saying anything that might upset China and threaten our economic security. And consequently, China, while occasionally making warm noises about how much it values its links with New Zealand, largely does as it wishes in this region, and places little value on anything New Zealand has to say. Whenever New Zealand dares pluck up the courage to offer even the mildest criticisms of Chinese policy, it is firmly rebuked by Beijing for interfering in China’s domestic affairs.

This year alone China has conducted unannounced naval exercises in the Tasman Sea, close to Australian territorial waters, and conducted a live missile firing test in the Pacific with only the briefest advance warning to New Zealand. On both occasions all New Zealand could do was stand by meekly and watch.

The sad, unintended outcome of our foreign policy is that at a time of heightened global and regional instability we are not trusted as reliable or committed by the United States and are being walked all over by China. Even our one true ally, Australia, has its frustrations with what it considers New Zealand’s less than full commitment to regional security.

As an independent nation, New Zealand has every right to pursue an independent foreign policy and should not abandon that ambition lightly. But at the same time, it must appreciate that it is not operating in a vacuum, and that there will be consequences, whatever options it chooses. The combination of an increasingly unpredictable and volatile United States, and a more activist China playing out their quest for global supremacy in our part of the world creates new pressures for countries like New Zealand.

That is why the challenges confronting our current foreign policy have become more pronounced. On the one hand, New Zealand cannot afford to become seen as too closely aligned with either of the superpower rivals, despite its economic reliance on China, and likely increasing pressure from the United States to modify its stance. But on the other hand, it cannot allow itself to be seen by either as irrelevant, or unreliable.

As the rock and the hard place become ever more uncomfortable, New Zealand needs to strike a new balance between upholding its independent foreign policy and being taken seriously as a regional player by the superpowers. Achieving that balance and protecting our national integrity will require our politicians and diplomats to exercise even more skilful diplomacy and careful leadership over the next few years than they have already done.

Yet it remains a goal worth striving for.

 

Since 1996 no new party has entered Parliament without either a sitting or former MP leading it. The Conservative Party in 2014 came close to doing so, scoring about 4% of the party vote, but ultimately failed and never attained that level of support again.

With some opinion polls currently suggesting the Opportunity Party is inching closer to the cusp of the 5% threshold that sobering reality remains a daunting challenge. As with the Conservative Party and other small parties before them, potential voters will have to be persuaded that the Opportunity Party can make a difference, and that therefore a vote for it would not be wasted.

That raises the broader position of the Party's positioning. The Opportunity Party has correctly positioned itself as a centrist Party, able to work with either the right or the left blocs. But voters like to know which side of the ledger the Party they support is really on.

Saying that a Party can work with either side of politics can confuse voters – believe me. When UnitedFuture's leader, I was often asked whose side I was "really" on – National’s or Labour's. When I replied neither, because I was on UnitedFuture's side, and our support for either a National- or Labour-led government was based solely on any policy agreements we could reach with them, I was accused of being an unprincipled opportunist.

One often hears a similar sentiment expressed in respect of New Zealand First today. And yet people say they quite like the idea of a party that can bridge gap between National and Labour. But despite MMP having been in place for thirty years now, many people still view politics through the old National/Labour prism.

In part this is due to both the major parties remaining too tribal to fully trust a smaller party that says it can work with either side in government. I was acutely aware of this when working as part of Labour- and National-led governments between 2002 and 2017. The reactions of both National and Labour to New Zealand First today show that sentiment remains a powerful part of contemporary politics.

That factor will be even more relevant in the event the Opportunity Party makes it to Parliament, especially given its lack of prior Parliamentary experience. Luxon's dismissal this week of the Opportunity Party as really a vote for Labour and the Green Party shows that nothing has changed in this regard. And sowing voter doubt about the Opportunity Party's "true" alignment in turn raises the question for voters of whether a vote for the Party can be risked.

So far, the Opportunity Party has had a relatively easy ride, because neither of the major parties has taken seriously the possibility it may win seats in Parliament. However, that may be changing now. The Party's rising poll results mean it will become subject to far more attacks from all the other parties as a potential risk to their support levels. How it responds will have a major influence on how voters perceive its credibility and whether it is worth voting for.

Its recent decision to change tack to focus on winning the Mount Albert electorate is a sensible one. After all, if it wins an electorate seat it will be deemed to have crossed the party vote threshold and every party vote it receives will count towards numbers of seats in Parliament. That would immediately reduce the wasted vote argument the other parties will throw at it because it would have crossed the party vote threshold without having to reach the 5% figure. But winning the Mount Albert seat – held by Labour the last eighty years – will be an uphill battle and cannot be assumed.

This will be the Opportunity Party’s fourth election. To date, it has provided novelty value, and until now has not threatened to gain representation. But this year may be its best chance to break through and do so. In the wake of political uncertainty the world over, it may benefit from being a party of fresh faces and new ideas that has come along at just the right time. But equally this election could also be its last chance.

However, even if it succeeds, the Opportunity Party will be in for a rude shock. It says nobly and admirably it wants to refocus the election campaign and politics generally to be about the best policy options for the future. But none of the other parties has such a grand vision – for them, elections are much more about doing all they can to win and retain political power. They are unlikely to welcome the well-meaning newcomer with open arms.

Therefore, should it cross the threshold, it will have to quickly adjust to the real political world where power and its retention are what matters to long-term Parliamentary parties, not earnest, lofty policy debates. What concessions it gains will be at best grudging, and only because its numbers might be needed to form a government. And if not, the Opportunity Party could face three unforgiving years of irrelevance – in Parliament but with few chances to achieve much.

For better or worse, the cruel reality remains that although many new and well-motivated parties have tried to get into Parliament over the years, few have succeeded. Persuading enough voters that it can break the mould and succeed where others have not, and so change the nature of politics, as it promises, is still a mighty hurdle for the Opportunity Party to overcome.

But this year is potentially its best prospect of doing so.

Our system of government has been built on the partnership between Ministers and their public service officials to implement the government’s policies. Inevitably, that requires a high level of mutual confidence and trust.

The system further assumes that officials, whatever their personal political allegiances, will work impartially with Ministers to achieve those goals. Ministers have the right to expect the professional loyalty and genuine effort of their officials, and officials should expect to receive the support of their Ministers in return.

By and large, the system works as intended, but every now and then things go awry, sometimes seriously. Recent revelations about some Immigration Service officials deliberately pulling the wool over the eyes of both the current and previous governments over a $33 million biometrics technology upgrade that ultimately produced nothing, provoking the understandable “fury” of Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, is perhaps the most dramatic example.

That is presently the subject of an inquiry by the Public Service Commissioner, so making pronouncements, let alone threats of imprisonment, about what should happen next is not only premature but also extremely unwise. Nevertheless, confirmation of Stanford’s complaints by her Labour predecessor, Andrew Little, highlights the seriousness of the situation.

However, officials pursuing their own agendas and keeping Ministers in the dark has been going on in the public service, usually at much lower levels, for years. Indeed, the internationally successful comedy series “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” were predicated on the notion that public servants regularly outwitted Ministers and thwarted their efforts to introduce policies the officials disapproved of. Many politicians, in New Zealand and elsewhere, considered the   series to be documentaries rather than comedies.

I began my working career as a junior official in the old Department of Trade and Industry, in the days when import licensing was still in place. To regulate imports and protect both the balance of payments and domestic manufacturing, the government produced an annual Import Licensing Schedule, setting out which specific consumer and other items and to which extent could be imported. The system was cumbersome, and open to much potential abuse.

Officials regularly ignored the Schedule when dealing with licensing applications from favoured  importers and ran the system according to their own instincts and experiences. Indeed, I recall on more than one occasion being at meetings where officials debated “what would Walter have done” to resolve a particular application, rather than following that year’s Import Licensing Schedule. The “Walter” they were referring to was Walter Nash, who had set up the import licensing system in 1936, decades earlier!

Years later, when a Minister, I recall being told by officials that regulations I was seeking were “just a couple of weeks” away, only to discover soon after that no work had been done on drafting the regulations because officials were unsure how to make them work and did not want to tell me so. On another occasion, I recall two officials appearing before a Cabinet committee to discuss a particular government programme. When the Prime Minister asked how this fitted in with current government policy, they bluntly replied that it did not because it was a programme established by a previous government which they were still administering, regardless of the then current government’s policy.

While these are smaller examples than the current Immigration Service scandal, they are symptomatic of a wider issue. Public servants often become so engrossed in what they are working on that they end up viewing it more as their “life’s work” than the government of the day’s policy. Because they tend to outlast Ministers in their roles, it is easy to see how they come to regard their political masters as transitory interruptions, interfering with the work they have been immersed in for so many years.  

And in many cases, they will be right – as public servants working on an issue over several years and different governments, they will often know more about the details (and the problems) than the Minister to whom they are reporting. But while this may provide an explanation of such behaviour, it does not justify it. It does, however, underscore the challenge facing the Public Service Commissioner in trying to get to the bottom of Minister Stanford’s concerns and the wider systemic issues underlying the behaviour she is so furious about.

But unless they are resolved in a way that enables Ministers – in this government or any future government – to regain confidence in the commitment and professionalism of the public service, the very structure and integrity of our system will be severely shaken. That in turn will impact on public trust – especially if it leads to people no longer having confidence that the government they have elected will be able to implement the policies they voted for.

As the esteemed British philosopher AC Grayling notes, democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires informed citizens, trusted institutions, and a political culture that values reasoned debate and compromise. He argues that when those conditions deteriorate, democracies become vulnerable to polarization, populism, and authoritarian tendencies.

In “Yes Minister” Sir Humphrey Appleby once famously said, “Politicians come and go, but the Civil Service remains … Politicians are there to make the decisions. Civil servants are there to make sure they make the right decisions.” A more balanced view might be that although modern government requires expertise and continuity, the ultimate authority and accountability for making decisions must rest with democratically elected politicians, whatever their limitations, rather than be usurped by public servants, their expertise and experience notwithstanding.

Given the rise of crude populism across the world at present, re-asserting Grayling’s point is becoming a vital step towards sustaining democracy as we know it.