Jacinda Ardern looking worse for wear. Evil eats its own
Rejoice! The Toothy Tyrant is no more. Jacinda Arden, the "kind" and "empathetic" Queen of Woke who locked her people in their homes for months on end following the appearance of a single case of COVID-19 and turned her island nation into a prison has
announced she is to step down. With the economy tanking and her party headed for almost certain defeat in the election later this year, it can only be taken as an admission of failure. Her fanatical pursuit of Zero Covid, which involved the roll-out of vaccine passports, the sacking of workers who refused to get jabbed and had a catastrophic impact on the New Zealand economy, has had disastrous consequences. Ross Clark has written a suitably
gloating piece in the
Telegraph titled, "Poor Jacinda Ardern, defeated by her own vanity" with the blurb: "She believed her own myth - that she was the most virtuous leader in the world. Then came the consequences of her disastrous actions." Here's an excerpt.
When you write on politics, upsetting people is an occupational hazard. Even so, sometimes you can get taken aback. Nothing I have written before or since has provoked so much outrage as a piece I wrote here in October 2020 predicting that Jacinda Ardern's zero-Covid policy in New Zealand would turn out to be a disaster. The ensuing Twitterstorm seemed to involve more people that inhabited New Zealand.
That was the point about Ardern. She wasn't just Prime Minister of New Zealand - and a popular one at her peak - she was a global pin-up for progressive values. She was the beacon of hope among those on the Left who had been destabilised by Donald Trump, Brexit and Boris Johnson. For many, she was seen as a breed apart among global leaders: one who was untouched by the fatal brew of ego, arrogance and self-interest which they saw as inbred into many male politicians.
Ardern's undoing was in that she appeared to believe that herself. I don't claim to be able to read her mind, but I would guess that her real reason for resigning ahead of New Zealand's general election later this year was not primarily that she wanted to collect her daughter from playgroup every day, as she has intimated, but that she could no longer cope with her halo having slipped. When you have been built up into a living saint it must come as a shock to find yourself under attack for failing to address the same old problems which afflict less-progressive national leaders. Inflation, a stuttering economy and rising crime are hardly unique to New Zealand, but they showed that there was nothing magical about Ardern's politics - the only difference is that in her case she lacked the toughness to weather serious adversity.
Ross worries that by resigning before an almost inevitable defeat at the polls, "she will come to be seen by progressives as a political martyr, reinforcing their belief in her greatness, as a female leader who willingly gave up power to be with her family". The reality, however, is that "she failed in much that she tried to achieve, and the hero-worship which she enjoyed around the world made things worse by adding to her hubris".
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Some of her errors were self-inflicted. I stick to every word I wrote on her zero-Covid policy. It was a dead-end which, had it not been abandoned in 2021, would have led to New Zealand becoming like China: now suffering a delayed wave of covid, having needlessly suffered three years of economic harm. For two years, New Zealand became a virtual hermit kingdom, whose people faced being shut in their homes if even a single case of Covid was identified in their town.
Ardern, who formerly worked as an adviser in Tony Blair's government, failed to take heed of the first part of his slogan: "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". The normally-placid country was shocked by a crime wave involving ram-raids and murders as the country reopened from its covid imprisonment. Police officers became sick of having to release delinquent youths they had arrested in the morning, only to see them reoffending in the evening. Then there was her war on farmers. New Zealand's agricultural sector was the crown jewel of the country's economy - one which, unlike its counterparts in other developed countries, stood on its own two feet, without subsidies. Then came Ardern's extreme climate change agenda, which threatened to put many farmers out of business if they could not meet impossible emissions-reduction targets.
The danger now is that in resigning before what was beginning to look like an inevitable defeat at the polls, she will come to be seen by progressives as a political martyr, reinforcing their belief in her greatness, as a female leader who willingly gave up power to be with her family. The reality is that she failed in much that she tried to achieve, and the hero-worship which she enjoyed around the world made things worse by adding to her hubris.
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