Analysis: It's been a rough week in politics and if it's not one Chris having a bad day, it's the other.That was the case on Friday when four shocker days for the prime minister swung to the left following a woeful poll result for Labour's Chris Hipkins.Christopher Luxon's foot-in-mouth moments would have been enough on their own without adding in his foreign minister telling a Chinese-Kiwi Parliamentary colleague to "go back to where you've come from", and unemployment at an 11-year high, with just 92 days until the election.A sympathetic observer would look to Luxon's time at the helm and say he's had bad luck with being handed a complicated coalition, an economy on its knees, and an unpredictable US president.Yet, Luxon is the first to ignore the complexities of Covid - a worldwide pandemic never seen in our time - and the problems that created for Labour and Jacinda Ardern.So, on that basis his starting point for all prime ministers is that regardless of the crisis - health or economic or both - it's not an excuse for the government of the day's performance, or lack thereof.That's a problematic baseline for a governing party that sold itself as the economic fixer.While there are plenty of improvements to be celebrated - turning points in some (not all) business confidence, inflation at times getting closer to the target bracket - there are also some nightmare numbers Luxon cannot ignore.Christopher Luxon.Pool/AFP/Michael BradleyThe biggest one came this week in the form of an unemployment rise to an 11-year high of 5.6 percent.There are now 171,000 people unemployed and around 8000 more people are experiencing long term unemployment - those out of work for a year or more - this June quarter than in the same quarter last year.Couple that with Luxon's brainfart moment last weekend where he decided to attack provincial New Zealand small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) telling them they had a "parent-child mentality" and needed to be more "adult" and the prime minister's grip on the economy doesn't look so tight.Former National Party leader turned Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Simon Bridges summed it up best in a NZ Herald column on Friday morning."And to state what I hope is blindingly obvious, but clearly isn't, SMEs are very different from a business with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions or billions in turnover. They didn't, as the Prime Minister says he did, "sit in Illinois for six years" as an executive of consumer goods company Unilever, and they don't think that much about "commercially superior returns, great customer experience and awesome internal culture". Not explicitly anyway. The owner very often is the internal culture, the HR manager, accounts, marketing and everything else, rolled into one. They are busy just surviving. They do their best every day without huge analysis or much if any support."Yet, such lowly businesspeople do worry about what the Government does, because the Government in this small nation controls so much in terms of spending, sentiment, policies and programmes. Its taxes, costs and red tape make all the difference, as do its statements and initiatives," Bridges wrote.It's a scathing reality check for the prime minister who prides himself on getting out of the Wellington bubble and connecting with everyday Kiwis living in the region to find himself managing to offend, and later having to apologise to, what was considered a friendly business audience.NZ First leader Winston Peters and Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan.RNZSupporters have commended Luxon for acknowledging he got it wrong and saying sorry, but there are others who have asked how he stuffed it up in the first place.The point Luxon was trying to make about him wanting government to get out of the way so that business can thrive is valid, but despite making this point on so many occasions in the past two-and-a-half years to various business audiences he still hasn't nailed the delivery of it.The other notable gaffe this week was turning a day of celebration in Auckland that the long-awaited CRL finally had an opening date into a confused mess about whether National was going to hold a referendum on MMP.It was an own goal when instead of concentrating on an infrastructure success, or taking a whack at Labour's plan to ditch National's much-loved Investment Boost policy, Luxon loose-lipped his way into an election promise that even his caucus doubted was real.National would have breathed a deep sigh of relief when the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll landed on Friday with some good news for the party.Not only was it up on 31 percent and ahead of Labour, but the coalition was also in a position to form a government and Luxon was up in the preferred prime minister numbers.Chris Hipkins.RNZ / Baz MacdonaldLabour has plummeted to 27.8 percent - a dire result that on first glance looks to have come from Luxon ruling out working with Opportunity after the election.Opportunity has soared to 6 percent in the poll at the expense of Labour.Labour has been operating on a small-target strategy with policy announcements this election year after learning the lesson of flooding voters in 2023, and losing sight of what the party stood for and was trying to sell.But the new approach appears to be having its own problems with National getting centrist policy like solar panel loans for households and KiwiSaver policy out ahead of Labour, and leaving the Opposition unable to criticise something it broadly agrees with.Hipkins also has his own popularity issues to deal with. He's a known quantity having been prime minister before, which he was handed and then had ripped off him when voters went to the polls and chose the other Chris.He has a difficult job explaining to voters why he'd do a better job second time round.There will need to be more polls with Labour sitting well under 30 before a trend can be determined but while Luxon famously doesn't respond to or worry about polls, bet your bottom dollar he took notice of this one.