OF THE
TIMES

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.Twitter comments:
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.



Comment: MRC's profile on Soros makes for interesting reading: George Soros: Media Mogul