As I’ve written several times now, the parallels between Jacinda Ardern and former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd are many – and ominous, for NZ Labour. Rudd was even more opinion-poll popular and media-beloved than Ardern. For a while.
But Rudd soon found that glamour and fairy-dust don’t count for much. As soon as the media spell wore off, Rudd’s downfall was as meteoric as his rise. He didn’t even last a full term.
The rumblings about Jacinda Ardern are getting louder – and sound very familiar. A humiliating backdown on tax, a spectacularly failed housing policy: even Bridges’ “part-time prime minister” jibe echoes the taunts of “Kevin 747”.
The rumours are rife that our Prime Minister is actually in the country this week and looking to attend to domestic matters – and she’s got a bit on her plate.
And because Jacinda Ardern’s plate is getting more and more full, what you are seeing increasingly is the sad reality that a reputation has been formed, and is starting to cement in place. That is of a leader that isn’t exactly hands-on, across the brief, decisive, or omnipresent.
This is a Government that’s drifting.
Even worse for Ardern is the growing perception of her as a politician more focused on glossy magazine covers and international plaudits than actually governing her country.
As Matthew Hooton so eloquently put it, she appears more interested in what the editor of The Guardian thinks than anyone locally.
A satirical image on social media captured the perception fast developing of Ardern: “Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to visit New Zealand”.
My sister, who lives in Rome and is here, currently informs me of what we already understand. Post-Christchurch, Ardern is globally seen as spectacular….What we also have is the cold, hard reality that no one internationally votes.
What you also should realise is the cold, hard reality that Twitter and Woman’s Day are not reality.
Rudd quickly became notorious for his “death by PowerPoint” obsession with focus-groups, summits and white papers – and a spectacular lack of substantive achievement. The same word is getting out about Ardern.
The “part-time Prime Minister”, who loves nothing more than to talk, consult, yak, discuss, whiteboard, or blue sky anything but actually make a decision is now facing a real issue with the public. Her personal popularity is significantly down, the gloss is wearing thin, if not off…
Reputations are hard won, but easily damaged. She’s damaging hers, she only has so much goodwill. She only has so much fairy dust.
A Newspaper.
As I also wrote vis-à-vis Rudd and Ardern: Prime ministerships cobbled together from fairy dust and wishes don’t last. Everyone at the ball may be temporarily enchanted by Jacinderella, but the clock strikes midnight sooner than anyone thinks. When the glass slippers come off, feet of clay are exposed for all to see. The courtiers in the press start to stare and whisper, and the next thing you know, your loyal footmen have turned into rats.
“If we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost America,” Lyndon Johnson famously said. If Ardern has lost ‘A Newspaper’, she’d better start worrying about losing New Zealand.