The drums are beating – see Heather Du Plessis-Allan in today’s Herald – for Christopher Luxon’s bid to become National’s new (and latest) leader.

It is conceded that he is a political tyro but – such is National’s current plight – it is suggested that he is a risk worth taking. In any case, it is argued that he makes up for this lack of experience by the fact that he was the chief executive of a major corporation – Air New Zealand.

Neither of these claims bears examination. In what other senior occupation – and there is none more senior than Leader of the Opposition, with the implication of readiness to become Prime Minister – would a complete lack of experience be waved aside as being of no consequence?

Politics is something that can be learned only on the job – and senior politicians would usually take years, if not decades, to learn the ropes. For National to put a novice into a leadership position could only be regarded as a measure of their desperation.

There is even less to commend the second part of the proposition – that time spent running a large corporation is adequate preparation, and a qualification, for running the country.

There is all the difference in the world between the two tasks. Running a business has its challenges, of course, but the task is, in essence, a simple one – the bottom line is really all that matters. Running the country, on the other hand, poses a bewildering range of responsibilities, owed to a wide range of interests, all with their own individual as well as collective priorities.

But the real objection to a businessman in Premier House is that it is fundamentally wrong and a threat to democracy. Pause for a moment and think about it.

No one can doubt that a market economy provides business people with all the opportunity they need to succeed and prosper, often at the expense of the rest of us; the one thing they will know, after all, is how to manipulate the market to their own advantage. The only way we have of restraining their drive for personal advancement is to put in place political arrangements that ensure that the interests of the rest of us are taken into account.

That is why we have political democracy. Centuries of experience have taught us that votes for all provide our best chance of ensuring that the advantages enjoyed in a market economy by business are not added to by handing them political power as well. If we were to install a business leader to lead the country, we would be giving up a protection that our forebears had fought to establish.

For Christopher Luxon, having run Air New Zealand is far from a qualification for the top job but quite the opposite.

The National party must always have known that they were taking a risk when they elected Judith Collins as leader. There were, after all, good reasons why they repeatedly declined to accept her candidature when she offered herself – as she frequently did.

She was always an inappropriate person to lead a political party in a democracy. Her long association with Cameron Slater and her endorsement of his chosen form of political warfare was surely enough to disqualify her.

The chickens have now come home to roost with a vengeance. Her readiness to pull the temple down around her has been amply demonstrated. She has now ruled herself out from any position of responsibility.

But she has done much more than commit (perhaps inadvertent) political harakiri. The excuse she has used to skewer her rival has meant that National has been deprived not only of their leader but of an alternative leader as well. If Simon Bridges’ offence means that he cannot be trusted to remain on National’s front bench, how could National offer him as someone to lead the country?

Politics is a hard business. The pressures it brings to bear on its practitioners in opposition mean that the voters have ample opportunity to judge how well they might handle the challenges they would inevitably face in government. We now have our answer.

The Herald has returned to form with a vengeance. In today’s issue, Barry Soper snipes at Jacinda’s handling of her regular press conferences. It seems that she did not give him an early chance to ask his very important question and took no account of his need to depart immediately in order to host his equally important radio show. These Prime Ministers! Don’t they know who are the important people around here?

And someone called Jamie Mackay apparently woke up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea for an article that would suit the Herald down to the ground. When he woke up and started to write it, he seems to have realised that – once having said what the idea was (the drawing of a parallel between Jacinda Ardern and Ian Foster) – there was not a lot more to say. But that didn’t stop the Herald from publishing it.

And there was a “blast” (the Herald’s own term) from Duncan Garner about home isolation. All in all, about par for the course.

The below-par All Black performance against France was – sadly – afflicted, again, by what has become a feature of New Zealand rugby – the scourge of the aimless kick.

It is surely a truism that, to win a rugby match, you must have the ball. But time and time again, we see our rugby players – in provincial rugby as well as at international level – deliberately give away good possession with an aimless kick down field.

There may be several good reasons for kicking the ball away. It may be seen as a painless way to gain territory; but if that is the aim, then the ball must either land within reach of your own advancing players, so that they can contest for it, or it must find the touchline where a lineout (assuming that, notwithstanding that the opponents will have the throw-in, it is successful) might provide a chance to launch an attack. A well-placed kick might perhaps be seen as an attacking weapon that will put opponents under pressure as they field it, but then the same requirements of precision and “reachability” will apply.

If, however the ball is kicked so that it lands in the arms of one’s opponents, or lands in open space where it can be gathered up by those opponents, the kick represents nothing more than an invitation to grateful opponents to run it back, something the French did all too well.

The lesson is, surely, that it better to be in possession, even if in your own half of the field, than to present your opponents with an opportunity to launch an attack against you. It will almost always be safer and more profitable to run the ball out of a defensive position than to risk having it run back by one’s opponents.

One thing is surely clear – to hoof the ball down field without regard for what the opponents might do with it when it is presented to them is a recipe for disaster. Any follower of the game can recognise all too easily when that mistake is made. Don’t coaches see it too?

Has any New Zealand Prime Minister had to face as many challenges as the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that Jacinda Ardern has had to confront?

The coronavirus epidemic alone has presented a myriad of problems, impacting as it does on so many different people and groups of people, and in so many different and sometimes contrary ways.

The point is made, neatly but no doubt inadvertently, in today’s Herald. They carry two pieces – one by Barry Soper, bemoaning the delay in opening Auckland’s borders, and another by Derek Cheng, expressing anxiety about an exodus of Aucklanders spreading the virus throughout the country. As with so many virus issues, she is “damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.”

Throughout this protracted crisis, Jacinda has dealt with problems and critics alike, with courtesy and good temper, and without complaint. Her critics, however, have become increasingly vitriolic, scarcely able to conceal their excitement and pleasure at the possibility that, as they put it, “her halo might be slipping”. For these critics, any concern they might feel on behalf of New Zealand as a whole is far outweighed by their partisan and slavering welcome for the possibility that our Prime Minister does not have all the answers at her finger tips.

How disappointed they must be that, despite all the brickbats thrown at her by those who are in some way adversely affected by the virus – each brickbat faithfully reported and amplified by her political opponents in the media and in opposition parties – Jacinda Ardern remains by some margin the most popular political leader we have.

For one who has had to weather the storms that have beset her, the good ship Jacinda Ardern is in remarkably good shape.