The New Zealand prime minister, Christopher Luxon, has survived a tense leadership vote six months out from the election as he battles an ongoing slump in opinion polls.

Luxon, who has served as prime minister since November 2023, said he had called for the vote at a caucus meeting on Tuesday morning.

The meeting in Wellington ran for more than two hours, fuelling speculation that Luxon might be forced out amid poor polling and leaks from MPs about alleged leadership challenges.

After the meeting, Luxon delivered a two-minute statement to declare the vote proved support for his leadership, but took no questions.

“I moved a formal motion of confidence in my leadership,” Luxon told reporters. “That motion was passed, confirming what I have been saying – I have the support of my caucus as their leader. Caucus has answered clearly and decisively. It has backed my leadership. That matter is now closed, and I won’t be commenting further on it.”

He condemned reporters for creating what he described as a “media soap opera”. New Zealand will vote in a national election in November.

Media outlet Stuff said MPs were refusing to say if Luxon won the confidence motion with unanimous support from caucus.

Luxon said he welcomed the press holding him to account, “but if the media want to keep focusing on speculation and rumour, I am not going to engage”.

“Everyday Kiwis will not be losing sleep over political sideshows here in Wellington. They’ll be thinking about their mortgage, their kids’ education, and the safety and security of their community,” he said.

Luxon did not mention the flagging public support for him and the National party.

In a poll released on Sunday, just 16% of New Zealanders listed Luxon as their preferred leader, which also showed that Luxon’s right-wing coalition would have lost if an election were held last week.

National has been trending downwards since it won 38% of the vote to win office in 2023.

Concerns from the backbench about Luxon’s performance had reached such a level that the National party whip, Stuart Smith, had felt obliged to raise the issue, and requested a meeting with Luxon, the New Zealand Herald reported last week.

However, in what the Herald called a “rare and extraordinary” rebuke, Luxon reportedly “ghosted” Smith and didn’t meet with him. Luxon disputed that a meeting was sought.

In March, Luxon shook up his cabinet and re-election team in attempt to shore up his leadership and reverse flagging poll results.

The centre-right National party leads a coalition government with ACT, a right wing party, and the populist New Zealand First party.

The coalition had campaigned on promises to fix New Zealand’s economy, which was battered by recession and stagnation after the Covid pandemic, but recovery has been slow.

With Australian Associated Press

The government has confirmed plans to move older wind and solar farms which make up almost a third of Great Britain’s power market on to fixed-price contracts to help protect households and businesses from future gas market shocks.

Under the plans, first revealed by the Guardian, renewable energy projects that earn subsidies on top of the market price will be asked to sign up to contracts that pay a set price for electricity as part of the government’s plan to “delink the price of electricity from the price of gas”.

The voluntary shift would mark the government’s most radical attempt to weaken the impact of soaring wholesale gas prices on the UK’s electricity costs, which are some of the highest in any developed economy.

Officials confirmed the market intervention alongside plans to accelerate the rollout of clean energy projects and encourage the uptake of electric alternatives to fossil fuels as the “only route to energy security and bringing bills down for good”.

The measures were set out ahead of a speech on Tuesday by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, in which he is expected to say that the lesson from the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years is to “double down, not back down, on our mission for clean energy”.

The Guardian reported last week that the so-called “legacy generators” will be offered the opportunity to sign up to the new contracts, which are similar to deals struck by low-carbon projects since 2017, or face higher windfall taxes on their profits.

Securing the bulk of the UK’s electricity from fixed-price contracts should mean electricity costs will fall and bill payers would be less exposed to sudden market price shocks.

The proposal was first put forward by analysts at the UK Energy Research Centre in April 2022 to guard against surging gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They said it could save between £4bn and £10bn a year if market prices remained high.

The UK has emerged as one of the countries most exposed to volatility in the fossil fuel markets because it generates about 30% of its electricity from gas plants, which set the price for the market overall.

This means higher market prices provide a windfall for renewable energy, biomass and nuclear reactors – unless they generate power based on a guaranteed fixed-price contract known in the industry as a contract for difference.

Since late 2022 generators have faced a 45% tax rate on electricity sold at market prices above £75 a megawatt hour through the electricity generator levy put in place after the war in Ukraine led to record-high gas market prices across Europe.

Power market prices have surged again in recent weeks, from about £74/MWh to more than £100/MWh, and officials fear they will climb higher if the disruption lasts into winter.