Truth

An estimated 50,000 attendees are taking part in Tommy Robinson's Unite The Kingdom protest, which will see swathes of people march from near the Strand to Parliament Square. Sky correspondent @Chesh reports from the scene trib.al/oFbThj6 📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602

Dear Christopher Luxon, @chrisluxonmp This morning on NewstalkZB you were asked about Nigel Farage’s surge in the UK and the clear anti-mass-immigration backlash that just delivered a political earthquake in Australia. Your response? “That’s just a grumpy few… people are playing politics with immigrants.” As a lifelong National voter, I have rarely heard a more tone-deaf dismissal of legitimate public concern. Because the grumpy few you wave away are not fringe agitators on social media. They are the silent majority of Kiwis who have watched their country change at breakneck speed while being lectured that any unease makes them right-wing or racist. You and your colleagues have spent years telling us how “highly skilled” the new arrivals are and how lazy and unambitious Kiwis have become. Yet your own government’s figures, and the brand-new India–New Zealand FTA, now classify Domino’s pizza workers, yoga instructors, chefs, and AYUSH practitioners as “skilled” migrants eligible for dedicated visa pathways. Net migration is still running at tens of thousands a year, with India one of the largest sources. Housing, hospitals, schools and roads are groaning under the weight. Wages in retail, hospitality and trades are being undercut. And when Kiwis point this out, the official line is that we’re just not trying hard enough. That’s not evidence-based policy. That is propaganda dressed up as economic necessity. Worse, it is selective. You and your MPs have been photographed wearing turbans and paying respects at temples and gurdwaras in search of ethnic bloc votes. That’s not “celebrating diversity.” That is ethnic vote-bank politics of the kind you accuse others of. When a junior National backbencher last week screamed “foreign political interference” because he was merely quote-tweeted by an overseas account, the absurdity was complete. The only foreign interference National seems to worry about is the kind that doesn’t deliver you donations or diaspora ballots. Meanwhile, you lecture us about the dangers of social media while your government rushes through under-16 bans modelled on the EU’s Digital Services Act - conveniently timed before the election. Elon Musk’s purchase of X has been one of the most significant pro-democracy acts of the past decade precisely because it broke the stranglehold of legacy media and government-aligned censors. Yet your instinct is to regulate and restrict rather than trust New Zealanders to think for themselves. That tells us everything about where your priorities lie. The latest Poll of Polls gives the current coalition an extremely high probability of surviving November. That is not because of any great love for National. It is because enough Kiwis still fear a return to the Ardern-era madness. But loyalty has limits. A great many of us who have voted National our entire adult lives have reached them. We will not reward a party that sneers at our justified concerns about rapid, unmanaged immigration from one particular country while simultaneously courting that same community for electoral gain. We will not vote for leaders who dismiss the very real pressures on housing, wages, infrastructure and social cohesion as the whingeing of a “grumpy few.” So here is the practical reality, Prime Minister. Kiwis with a functioning brain will party vote NZ First - the only party in your coalition that has consistently treated immigration numbers as a serious policy lever rather than a virtue signal. In the electorates many of us will still hold our noses and give National the local vote to keep the left out. But the party vote is no longer yours by default. You have mistaken quiet frustration for automatic loyalty. That era is over. The “grumpy few” you mock are the backbone of the National Party’s historic support. Keep dismissing us and you’ll discover exactly how quickly a safe coalition majority can evaporate. Yours, in genuine disappointment, A former National voter