I can fully understand her decision to step down. Like everywhere it seems, there’s around 2-5% of the population who are fully immersed in conspiracy theories and hidden agendas where Ardern is being paid by big pharma to promote and help spread COVID in order to make billions for her and her lizard mates, who are also, er, trafficking children for a giant organisation that’s top secret and no one knows about. We have our own media personalities here who go by the Hopkins/Farage playbook and get a stupid amount of airtime.
These people aren’t harmless though, the words they use – particularly when directed at Ardern – are disgusting highly personal attacks and misogyny is very much the order of the day, love.
Conservatively, Ardern’s handling of COVID saved over 10,000 lives in NZ. Her approach was health-based, not driven by the economy. Her calm, decisive and reassuring way of handling of the crisis gave her the biggest populat mandate at a general election for decades. That was in 2020, which seem like the sepia-tinted good old days now. The occupation of the parliament grounds about a year ago was scary. As we saw with the Christchurch mosque attack, it only takes one dangerous nutcase and I think Ardern is rightly concerned about her own safety. Her daughter is about to start school and there’s a tough general election coming in October, which may result in Labour losing power, no matter what she does. Like England, New Zealand’s default setting is Tory and you have to be an extraordinary opposition leader to make any headway at all.
She can’t sprinkle magic dust over the economic situation and make it all better. She certainly can be accused of over-promising and being too optimistic about NZ’s recovery – but that’s what prime ministers do. There isn’t a long and embarrassing list of gaffes and lies. Her friends do not run pretend PPE companies, lining their pockets with taxpayers’ money. She leaves with her reputation and legacy intact. In 2017 she took the leadership of the Labour Party six weeks before the election and thanks to a messy coalition, she managed to negotiate her way to the top job. She now hands it over to the next person with 8 months to go until the next one.
We haven’t seen the last of her – she’s still very young for a political figure. But for now, she says she needs to step away. I believe the recent pile on from the media and the aforementioned emboldened nutcases has caused this decision to be made.
Certainly one of the rare good ones as much as can be deduced from this distance
Ditto@dai
She’s stipped down. This should make it an interesting iliction.
I have to say I greeted this news with dismay. God knows how it must feel to folks in NZ. I know words like “beacon of hope” are cheesey but that’s what she’s been.
Weird – she has a great reputation on the World stage yet when BBC news reported on her decision this am they got soundbites from 5 kiwis 2 of whom were sad to see her go. The other 3 were most definitely not.
Other Kiwis I have spoken to have also been less enamoured by her.
Definitely better than anything we have had here for about the last 20 years.
Sweeping generalisation incoming: Leaders who are popular abroad are often divisive, if not actual hate figures, at home. Nobody outside the UK has a bad word to say about Thatcher, apart from expats who left to get away from her. Think of Gorbachev, Obama, Blair. Going over well on the world stage usually makes intractable domestic enemies.
Whereas Boris Johnson bucked that trend as everyone at home and abroad thought he was a cunt
Well, apart from the millions of people who voted for him, and would do again.
Yebbut, they’re all c (That’s enough. – Ed.)
Generous marker. I wouldn’t go any higher than D minus
Someone who knows when to go and does it with grace. Unlike a long list of politicians we could all mention.
I looked like she might have struggled to form a majority government, and if she had lost the appetite for the fight she was right to step down. I know little of NZ politics, though I share the general positive impression of Arden found here, but a lot of electorates are going to struggle to forgive the restrictions of lockdown (however correct those decisions were) and ensuing economic damage.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/05/support-for-jacinda-ardern-and-nz-labour-sinks-to-lowest-since-2017-poll-shows
“Like England, New Zealand’s default setting is Tory”
I’d bed really interested in your further ruminations on this curious element of another interesting blog post from your keyboard, BC.
I’d assumed that New Zealand, electing leaders like Ardern and Helen Clark, was generally speaking a soft liberal force for good, despite common stereotypes I hold (but try to regard with suspicion) that it’s a favourite bolt hole for Rapture/climate catastrophe predicting billionaires looking for somewhere remote (not Mars) to sit out the apocalypse, and/or that nostalgic Mittelschicht Brits see it like the Isle of Wight – somewhere reassuringly stuck 50 (70) years in the past.
Haven’t they got a map? NZ is always in the future.
The new mayor of Auckland is a hard-nosed right-winger and self-styled fixer, which might be a straw in the wind…
Unbelievably there was a muchworse candidate than him, Leo Molloy, who seemed to be gaining a bit of a following from the older voters. He backed out a few weeks before polling. This is a brief description of his interview with a NZ comedian, Guy Williams (who is very well known for his comedy interviews).
“What started as a poke at the politics of the woke left ended up in an over-the-top rant. Molloy’s constant swearing, grabbing of Williams’ and his own genitals, and a seeming obsession with discovering the age at which Williams lost his virginity left many viewers feeling uncomfortable.”
Broadly speaking, Maori and Pacific Islanders tend to be left-leaning as well as those that live in the cities.
The rural areas are strongly Tory and probably always will be. However, they will give their own party “a bloody nose” if they don’t like how things are going – which is what happened in 2020. Most of them didn’t vote Labour – they moved their vote to the more libertarian ACT Party. This divided the right and allowed Labour to prosper.
Ardern also had a rural ace up her sleeve by being brought up in a small rural town.
If you are dropped into the centre of Auckland – it’s as modern and diverse and loud as any city with 1.5 million people in it. If you are dropped into a small town in rural Canterbury, you may get that “UK back in the old days ” vibe.
Thanks, BC!
I have relatives in New Zealand. They are vigorous dilikers of Jacinda Arden. To be honest, it made me love her more. I think she is splendid.
I love her too. I have a limited edition poster print of her by a notable NZ artist (can’t remember the name) which a mate of mine in NZ sent me – he loves her too.
I agree with BC’s assessment. Jacinda is a most competent politician; well briefed and decisive. No one worked harder as PM, so she’s entitled to feel there is little left to give, after the seemingly endless series of dramas she’s had to deal with.
She admitted the haters and the death threats have also taken their toll. It’s probably not the sole reason she’s quitting. What’s most disturbing is it’s not just sad tin-hatted men and headline grabbing journos who are piling on. A large proportion of the haters are women. And the level of hate is off the scale, completely out of proportion with any rational disagreement one might have with Jacinda’s (to my mind) excellent handling of every crisis that’s come her way.
She’s right to walk away. We don’t deserve her.
Excellent last line Nick and I couldn’t agree more. Hopefully she’ll go and run the UN and do something really useful.
That’s the expectation Twang, once she’s had some quality time with the family.
Thanks @nickduvet.
The problem isn’t the fact she has resigned. If I have my calendar right, people are pissed that the election is perilously close to the World Cup quarter final.
Weapons-grade thundercunt Cory “gay marriage leads to bestiality” Bernardi has just opined on Sky that there’s more to it, we’re not being told the whole story. You only have to look at the comments under the YT clip to see the sort of shit she was dealing with.
Yes – I don’t need to read them to know the kind of things being said. Honestly, it’s not just the lunatics wrapped in tinfoil – it’s people spreading completely made up stuff like 8-year-olds in a playground.
Young, idealistic and not short of the fresh ideas needed to transform those ideals into realities, JA is just the sort of leader our planet needs right now.
What makes her (hopefully temporary) withdrawal from the fray doubly sad is that it means fewer passionate youngsters will be willing to take on the idealogically empty old timers who’ve made such a mess of the world.
Young, idealistic and not short of the fresh ideas needed to transform those ideals into realities, JA is just the sort of leader our planet needs right now.
What makes her (hopefully temporary) withdrawal from the fray doubly sad is that it means fewer passionate youngsters will be willing to take on the idealogically empty old timers who’ve made such a mess of the world.
You can say that again!
@dai
And probably will
The most toxic stuff does seem to come from males in late middle age who seem to be going through some form of personal crisis. This makes them search for (and find) material that backs up what they instinctively feel – that the cards have always been stacked against them. These are vulnerable people, ripe for exploitation by predators.
You see, those instincts are not wrong – but they’re encouraged to face the wrong way by those who are perfectly happy with how things are now.. What’s encouraging is that the younger generations are less inclined to be taken in by that stuff.
Ardern has become such a totem of the Culture Wars that I find it hard to reach any real conclusion about her.
Clearly, she suffers a great deal of vile and unmerited abuse online, but equally some of the hero worship/cult of personality always seems a little over the top for a politician.
As is so often the case in modern political life, both sides of the argument seem to feed each other and make it increasingly difficult to arrive at a sober appraisal of Ardern’s actual merits/flaws. As does the fact that she leads a relatively small nation the domestic politics of whom most of us will now go back to ignoring entirely.
In terms of her decision to quit, I think it’ll be interesting to see what she does next. Good luck to her.