The Good Oil Daily Opinion Poll (run Monday, Wednesday and Friday) has a different sort of poll today.
In this one you can tell them who you want as National Leader.
Who would you like to see as leader of the National Party?
Good Oil Opinion Poll 14 August 2025.
At time of this post here are the top contenders:
Simeon Brown 42%
Someone Else 18%
Chris Penk 13%
Christopher Luxon 8%
From total Votes 76.
Link will get you to the full list.
https://goodoil.news/the-good-oil-daily-opinion-poll-221/
Now either have your say here or go to the Good Oil Blog and contribute directly to their Poll.
Just after 6pm – with 384 votes
Brown 39%
Someone Else 18%
Penk 17%
Luxon 6%
No Minister 
Much as Luxon gives me a dose of the squirts there are two countering factors here.
First, dumping a leader, even mid-term, but especially in just the first term, is a certain loser because what voters hate more than anything else is a government that looks like it’s falling apart.
Unlike Labour, the National Party has little history of doing this when in government; Holland was old and sick and knew it himself in 1957; Holyoake retired as expected; Marshall was knifed by Muldoon in Opposition. The last time something like this was done was Shipley v Bolger, and for much the same reasons, and in the 3rd term – and look how that turned out. I’d bet that Bolger would have won again in 1999 against Clark and then they’d have inherited a good global economy to 2001, and perhaps even won a 5th term in 2002 by pointing out that nobody could do anything about global conditions (which turned out to be brief anyway, as Labour happily discovered)
Second, there’s no question that Luxon represents the bulk of the party at the moment, meaning its voters, MP’s and Cabinet Ministers. What would change in terms of policy if one of them took over? National has always loved less CEO’s than Chairman’s of The Board, and Luxon fits that role perfectly.
If you’re going to be PM in this country then you’re going to have to work with other parties (I don’t think we’ll see a single party in power like Labour had again). That requires a certain amount of maturity.
I don’t have a huge amount of time for Chris Luxon because he acts more like a mediator then a leader, but I also don’t underestimate wrangling messrs Peters and Seymour into a functioning group.
Simeon Brown? I don’t think so. While he may do some work (unlike a lot of other politicians) he always sounds like a yapping little dog. I also don’t think that anyone at 34 has the life experience to run a country, especially as a chunk of his working life has been as a politician.
Chris Penk seems to have a brain and Erica Stanford is showing some backbone.
I think people expect too much out of National. They’re not a “right wing” party. They never have been. They’re a “centre right” party with a reasonable emphasis on the “centre” part.
Anyway, they’re all depressing. Every single political party in this country. Individually there are quite a lot of politicians across the spectrum that I like, but the parties suck. Or in the case of the Greens are just insane.
Tomorrow, Bolger is second only to the communist cunt in the amount of damage done to NZ.
Had our Jen not rolled him We’d be even more shagged by now.
Quite. If you expect nothing, you’ll never be disappointed. It’s like being a Black Caps fan, at least up until about 2018. Nonetheless, the purpose of the Black Caps is not to merely show up, but to win cricket matches. At best, the National Party show up to offer the political equivalent of Travis Head and Cameron Green some batting practice. At worst, they are match-fixing, and right now we have a government of match-fixers.
BBB…= Bring Back Bill.