When Jacinda became the Labour leader and was selected as prime minister, the media couldn’t get enough of her. From magazine covers and photo shoots, her face was everywhere. We have complained bitterly about how they cut her so much slack, and she seemed to get away with murder.
Well, everything has changed. It was only ever a matter of time. Jacinda may have fallen into the trap of thinking that the media love her, but the truth is, they have a job to do. They have recently proved that they will drop anyone like a hot brick if there is a scent of blood anywhere, and they have definitely been sniffing blood in Jacinda’s camp in the last week.
Once again, Jacinda has shown her naivety. She thought she could just lie, obfuscate and pass everything over to a working group or to a pending report, and that everyone would still love her for ever.
It was always going to come crashing down at some point. Now, it has.
Let’s start with Duncan Garner.
Jacinda, meet NZ’s press gallery: they hunt as a pack of underpaid, unloved mongrels who judge life on scalps taken.
Yet this time you’ve gifted them a beauty, a textbook way how not to do something, and how not to cover it up.
It’s simply too hard to accept she didn’t know it was an assault of a sexual nature.
Her staff knew.
Her party knew.
Parliament knew. The media knew.
Grant Robertson knew (but can’t say what).
Kelvin Davis heard a rumour in M?ori. How helpful.
And even the woman selling the $3 coffees by the lift knew, although Kelvin wasn’t sure if she was talking about the assaults at Labour’s summer camp or this latest one.
And Labour’s ruling council knew too. Ardern is on that body. Did she sit in on discussions over this? She won’t say. Why not?
The reason is obvious. She did sit in on the discussions, or at the very least, read the minutes of the meetings.
It was already on notice in the #metoo period, so you’d think all the players would be on heightened alert to get this right.
Get this right at all times, and not at Ardern’s cost.
But the opposite has happened. Its public talk said inclusion, but behind closed doors the doodling on the paper pads spelt disingenuous.
It looks like Labour put tribalism and its survival first, and the welfare and care of this woman a distant second. It’s no surprise. What a debacle investigating itself. It’s like putting a drug dealer in charge of his own trial. Not guilty, your honour, nothing at all to see here.
And all this when the PM was herself spouting off about the #metoo era being the cleanout and welcome change that was well overdue.
Stuff.
Of course it was. Just not for the Labour party, that’s all.
Then there was John Armstrong.
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the Ardern Administration?
How damaging are this week’s extraordinary revelations surrounding Labour’s disgraceful mishandling of sexual assault allegations to the prospects of the party clinging onto power following next year’s election?
Will the exposure of what has to be regarded as a deep vein of hypocrisy, insincerity and cynicism running through the very heart of the governing party turn out to be a tipping point which will end with Labour being tipped out of office?
Has this unseemly episode exposed Jacinda Ardern as both a fake and a flake?
In short, has Labour drastically reduced its chances of retaining the Government benches in Parliament by unwittingly blunting the fire-power of its most potent weapon?
The offhand and shabby treatment by the party of a number of such complaints of alleged sexual assault and misconduct is not just a disgrace. It sits in the realm of the despicable.
Labour claims to be the voice of the powerless fighting against the all-too powerful. In this instance, it was trampling the powerless into the dust.
It has made a nonsense of Ardern’s positioning herself as a promoter of women’s rights and a voice of young voters.It has made Ardern’s parading of herself as some kind of Mother Theresa-Lite look like a hollow charade.
TVNZ.
There are plenty more like this in the media at the moment. Jacinda has been laid bare. She is all talk but no substance. We all knew that, of course, but now it seems that the media and the general public know it too.
Even The Guardian has waded in for the kill.
It’s a very different Labour party we are seeing this week. The party wing has been exposed as anything but caring and transparent in the #MeToo space, and it’s threatening to bring down not only a number of party officials, but the prime minister herself.
Now, we’re all holding our breath to see what Ardern will do. She claims her officials did not tell her of the serious sexual nature of the complaints – fewer and fewer New Zealanders are ready to believe that this week – but whether true or not, this is her mess to clean up.
Her credentials at home and abroad as a new kind of leader – kind, caring, compassionate and honest – all hang on her next move.
My favourite, however, is Bryce Edwards, who points out that this scandal does not only disappoint non-Labour voters but pulls at the beliefs of Labour voters themselves.
If the political reputation of the Labour-led Government and Jacinda Ardern have been badly or even fatally damaged by the ongoing #MeTooLabour scandal, it will be because they’ve disappointed their own supporters, and failed to live up to their own values.
This is very different to a leftwing government and prime minister being undermined by their opponents or the political right. It’s one thing for opposition MPs, businesspeople, or conservative commentators to condemn the Labour-led Government on something like business confidence or law and order.
Any perceived shortfalls on such matters often don’t actually hurt Labour over the longer-term. But when progressives, party supporters, and the political left are losing trust in the Government, it’s a much more serious problem. It could mean that mobilising those activists and voters at the election is that much more difficult.
However, it’s the fact that progressives and the left are feeling disillusioned with the Prime Minister and Labour that will ultimately determine whether this scandal is of longer-term consequence.
A Newspaper.
Brand Jacinda is black and blue. The fall of the fairy princess is well in progress. And about time.