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Watching the Three Amigos attempting to pull together a coherent government certainly has its funny side. The mad dash for Wellington Airport that followed the news that “Winston’s gone home!” set a new benchmark in real-life political comedy. It did not, however, seem quite so funny the next morning. As the country’s better cartoonists were not slow to illustrate, the entire incident revealed the Prime Minister Presumptive of New Zealand to be an inexperienced numpty.

Christopher Luxon’s problem is that he has had too little time to firmly establish himself as the undisputed leader of the New Zealand Right. Indeed, nothing he has said or done has left more than the faintest impression in the soft clay of our politics. The contrast with John Key, Luxon’s long-term backer and supposed mentor, could hardly be starker.

Nothing Luxon has done since becoming Leader of the Opposition nearly two years ago comes anywhere close to Key’s audacious raid into Labour’s heartland. That visit to McGehan Close, in Helen Clark’s Mt Albert electorate, demonstrated two crucial propositions. First, it showed that he was not afraid to go looking for votes in what old National Party hands used to call “Tiger Country”. Second, it showed just how confident he was of finding at least some working-class (and Māori) support for the Nats where there should be none.

Even more impressive (if not quite so dramatic) was Key’s rescue of the so-called “Anti-Smacking Legislation”. Not only was his pledge of National’s support for Sue Bradford’s bill a clear signal to his party’s socially liberal wing that his would not be a reactionary government, but also it was a very public casting-off of the hard-right.

The message Key was sending to the likes of Family First and the Maxim Institute was brutal in its clarity. “I don’t need your votes to win, but you need my support to achieve even your most modest goals. So, don’t you even think about pressuring me or my government. There just aren’t enough right-wing extremists in this country to threaten a liberal-conservative party like National. This is not the United States.”

These gestures confirmed Key’s status as the undisputed master of the New Zealand Right. He was one of the very few in his party who understood that, increasingly, large chunks of Labour’s working-class vote were up-for-grabs, and that the votes of what would now be called the “woke” were in no sense welded on to Labour. “Identity politics” – precisely because it has so little to say to working-class voters – can as easily be made to work for the right as the left. Every year, Key was content to make a fool of himself at the Big Gay Out. He understood that the LGBTQI community was politically ambidextrous.

Luxon has done none of these things, or, at least, he’s done none of them as effectively as his predecessor. Kicking-off his career with Kryptonitic comments equating abortion with murder was politically idiotic. For a start, New Zealand’s anti-abortion movement is too small to be worth courting. Worse still, Luxon lacked the ethical fortitude to stand by his convictions.

As Matthew Hooton, flexing his newly developed philosophical muscles, pointed out: a man who believes unborn babies are being murdered, as a matter of routine, in every public hospital in the land, cannot adopt the laissez-faire approach evinced by Luxon. Murder is not a private matter; it is an unendurable affront to society’s core values. It cannot be tolerated – only resisted.

In stepping away from what he had owned as his personal convictions on abortion, Luxon laid himself open to the damaging charge of moral equivocation. It was a poor start, and it hasn’t gotten any better.

Certainly, the 2023 election campaign did little to reassure New Zealanders that Luxon’s understanding of basic economics was any stronger than his grasp of moral philosophy. Seemingly incapable of advancing a coherent economic vision, Luxon also demonstrated an alarming willingness to defend National’s indefensible fiscal position (tax cuts paid for by a foreign buyers’ tax) long after it had been dismissed by most reputable economists. Sticking to your guns only makes sense when you’re well supplied with ammunition. When all you’ve left to fight with are empty phrases, it’s time to sound the retreat.

This advice makes even more sense if you are required to negotiate with - in the case of David Seymour a young, uncompromising economic dogmatist, and unyielding moralist - or, in the case of Winston Peters, a much older and more experienced politician, whose whole career has been devoted to the proposition that politics is the art of the impossible. Placing insultingly meagre first-offers before such men might be survivable if Luxon had come to the table, as Key did in 2008, with 45 per cent of the party vote. Turning up with this election’s 38 per cent is nowhere near so impressive.

Certainly, it is difficult to see Key (or Jim Bolger, or Rob Muldoon) scampering off to the airport after Peters like a needy puppy. Much easier to imagine him shouldering his golf clubs and heading for the capital’s swankiest links. Pausing only to offer his cheeriest smile and cheekiest wave to the gawping media pack. If Peters could go fishing with his mates in the Bay of Islands, Key would have made it clear that he, too, has plenty of activities with which to pass the time.

The moment Peters saw what Luxon was prepared to offer, he must have known that he was dealing with an amateur. By allegedly pitching his bid too low, Luxon has told NZ First’s negotiators that there is much, much more to be gained by waiting for a better offer. With no bird in Winston’s hand, and none whatsoever visible in the bush, what else could he do but head for the airport? But not before dropping by the Act Party negotiators’ HQ and confirming that Seymour, too, had been insulted. Not before securing the youngest Amigo’s agreement to fight this numpty as a team.

What Luxon and his colleagues have seemingly failed to appreciate is that all the pressure is on them. As the largest party, they come, not with all the cards in their hands, but with a very large clock ticking loudly in their ears. Covid and a cost-of-living crisis have made New Zealanders ill-tempered and impatient. In the minds of many, the wait for a new government has already gone well over time: Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, they want this unconscionably drawn-out regime-change completed: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it \were done quickly.”

National supporters went into the 2023 election convinced they had a leader who could do the business – now they’re not so sure.