The Ladder

Built for One, Coveted by Many

Photo by Katya Ross on Unsplash

It is in the nature of things that not all politicians can achieve greatness. Of the six hundred men who then constituted the Senate, only eight could be elected praetor—to preside over the courts—in any one year, and only two of these could go on to achieve the supreme imperium of the consulship. In other words, more than half of those milling around the senaculum were doomed never to hold elected office at all.

Robert Harris, Imperium

Being a Member of Parliament is a pretty tough job. MPs juggle everything from constituent issues to late-night bill debates and party matters. The work is unrelenting, long hours are the norm and evenings and weekends often vanish into community events.

And if you screw up, the media is going to be all over you like a dog on a butcher’s apron.

You no longer get to speak your mind. You must toe the party line, even if it means supporting policies they privately hate. Openly defying your party (“crossing the floor”) is so rare in New Zealand that it can bring down a government.

For all that, the financial rewards aren’t stellar compared to what (some) MPs could earn elsewhere. A backbencher earns roughly $180,000 a year. That’s well in excess of average remuneration and I’m not asking you to feel sorry for them. But given that many high-flyers take a big pay cut to stand for office, it is worth asking why so many people feel compelled to do it.

In fact, being an MP is such a sought-after job that every election sees far more applicants than openings. For the 120 or so seats in Parliament, hundreds of hopefuls throw their hats in the ring. In 2023, a total of 567 candidates vied for the chance to suffer long hours and the loss of personal free time and speech should they be lucky enough to win.

The self-serving answer that politicians give is that they want to serve the public. I am sure there is some of that. And perhaps it is enough to sustain a single term in Parliament.

For everything else, it’s mostly about ambition. The kind of person who strives to be an MP isn’t content just being a backbencher, even if that’s all they’re destined to ever be. They almost all secretly see a potential future Prime Minister staring back at them from the mirror.

Ridiculous? Certainly. But they believe it all the same.

They will deny it to the press. They will deny it to their families. Hell, they may even deny it to themselves. But in almost all cases, it’s there.

Of course, not everyone can be Prime Minister. Most political careers ultimately end in disappointment or middling achievement. But the possibility of being the One Who Makes It exerts an almost gravitational pull.

Each MP is the hero of their own story, climbing a narrative arc toward eventual triumph. If we could generate electricity from political ambition in politics, we would solve climate change. It survives on even the faintest hope.

But that hope is counterbalanced by an intense fear of missing the moment. Opportunities to grab the big chair are rare and often unpredictable. A party leadership chance can come at inconvenient times. It could be while the party is in opposition and floundering, or it could be in the middle of a term in government.

Rationally, those are bad times to take a risk. But for an ambitious politician, an imperfect opportunity is still better than none at all. You gotta shoot your shot. That’s why we frequently see leadership challenges at seemingly inopportune moments, and why politicians even fight to lead their parties into doomed elections.

New Zealand’s recent political history offers a few textbook examples. Back in 2020, the National Party was staring down an all-but-doomed election campaign against Jacinda Ardern’s wildly popular government. Nonetheless, a faction of National MPs staged a coup against their leader just months before the election, replacing Simon Bridges with Todd Muller. It was a Hail Mary play driven by panic and ambition that ended very badly.

Likewise, the Labour opposition churned through leaders in the early 2010s even when their odds of beating John Key were slim. Better to try and fail than watch from the sidelines as someone else seizes the next chance. Far better, in the ambitious mind, to grab what you can get, and trust your own brilliance to carry the day in the face of terrible timing.

Which brings us to the supposed Luxon–Bishop “coup” story. A few polls have shown the government stuck in second gear. It was reported by Stuff that Bishop was quietly canvassing support to roll Luxon in response.

The evidence for this - so far - seems to be little more than political gossip passed through the journalistic sausage machine. I’m sure it wasn’t made out of thin air, but it could well be that the reason the coup failed was because it failed to exist in the first place.

From an electoral standpoint, it would make little sense. The government’s difficulties are serious, yet not irreversible, and dumping a first-term PM would be disastrous. Luxon may not be bestriding the landscape like a Colossus but he’s not as chronically unpopular Keir Starmer. More than anything, this government resembles that of Anthony Albanese one year out from Australia’s general election earlier in 2025.

But a move against Luxon (if it ever happens) is unlikely to ever really be about electoral calculation. It will be in response to a window of opportunity for personal advancement. Because if the opportunity is there and someone else takes it, you might never get the chance again.

The uncomfortable truth is that democracy may actually require a certain degree of delusion to function. The system needs people drunk on their own perceived potential, because that intoxicating delusion also fuels the grinding work of representative democracy. We need them to believe the impossible.

Only by letting the ambitious convince themselves that they’re destined to be our masters can instead we turn them into hardworking servants of the system.