Will Labour’s Luxon attacks backfire?

Jon Johansson writes:

But making Luxon seem out of touch and a policy-free zone isn’t effective when Luxon is talking about the cost of living every day and when every political journo knows detailed policy isn’t announced midway through an election cycle. So, it seems like an ineffectual, scattergun attack.

Second, it’s illogical for Labour to hammer Luxon’s leadership when it was the PM who appointed him to chair her Business Advisory Council in 2018. Was her judgment wrong then, or now? And why?

Ardern had scores, maybe hundreds, of people she could have chosen to chair the Business Advisory Council. The fact she chose Luxon shows she rated his abilities.

Third, Labour risks turning more people off if it runs negative attacks on Luxon and National because it contradicts the transcendent value expressed by its leader: kindness. This goes directly to authenticity. Lose that and its sayonara.

And that has already been damaged by some of the decisions and rhetoric around Covid-19 response.

An imminent reshuffle offers a circuit-breaker of sorts although removing or shuffling warrants from poorly performing ministers will likely reinforce failures of delivery more than a deep bench.

It will probably be a minor reshuffle, when in fact she should be dumping several under-performing Ministers. She could replace them with Deborah Russell, Kieran McAnulty, Camilla Belich, Greg O’Connor and Arena Williams.

UPDATE: The reshuffle is being announced today. Unclear yet if she is just shuffling portfolios or actually changing Ministers.