Jacinda Ardern, the UK Reaction

January 19^th 2023.

Having seen the reports of Jacinda Ardern’s resignation in the UK media I thought it would be useful to share a few comments from the UK MSM. To quote Robbie Burns “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!”

Asked how she would like New Zealanders to remember her leadership, Ardern said “as someone who always tried to be kind”.

“I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader – one who knows when it’s time to go,” Ardern said.

Over the past year, Ardern has faced a significant increase in threats of violence, particularly from conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine groups infuriated by the country’s vaccine mandates and lockdowns. She said, however, that the increased risk associated with the job were not behind her decision to step down.

Source The Guardian 19th January 2023.

Bryce Edwards, a political analyst at Victoria University of Wellington, said Ardern rose to power “out of nowhere” at a time when left-wing parties were in retreat. “There was a sense of mania — Jacindamania,” he said, praising her charisma at a time when figures such as former US president Donald Trump were in the ascendancy. “She was a revelation and a nice counter to populist, reactionary politics.” Ardern won a sweeping election victory in 2020 as the public backed her stringent policy of border closures and lockdowns in an effort to stem Covid’s spread. She also won praise for strong and compassionate leadership in her response to the 2019 terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch in which 51 people were killed, as well as with the eruption of the White Island volcano. But public sentiment towards her administration has soured this year as New Zealand grapples with a cost of living crisis, a sharp rise in interest rates, lower house prices and a rise in crime.
Neale Jones, a former adviser to Ardern, said that her exit presented Labour with a “silver lining” of appointing a leader more focused on the cost of living crisis and distancing the party from radical programmes such as water and media reforms that had proved unpopular.

Source The Financial Times 19^th January 2023

The BBC carried a comment from Helen Clark at the WEF praising how Ardern had successfully steered New Zealand through international waters.

In 2022, Ms Ardern told the BBC her declining popularity was the price her government had paid for keeping people safe from Covid-19.

However, she has also been confronted with a cost-of-living crisis, national fears about crime, and a backlog of election promises put off during the pandemic.

Reaction to her announcement has been varied. One local from her own Auckland electorate told the NZ Herald Ms Ardern was “running away before getting thrown out”, blaming her for increased crime and rising living costs.

For others, like Auckland Pride’s Max Tweedie, she is “one of the greatest prime ministers in New Zealand’s history”.

Those are sentiments shared by New Zealand actor Sam Neill, who said Ms Ardern had faced “disgraceful” treatment from “bullies” and “misogynists”.

“She deserved so much better,” the Jurassic Park star wrote on Twitter.

Ms Ardern listed her government’s achievements on climate change, social housing and reducing child poverty as ones she was particularly proud of. ***

But she said she hoped her legacy in New Zealand would be “as someone who always tried to be kind”.

“I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader – one who knows when it’s time to go,” she said.

Source BBC 19^th January 2023

So, after the 2020 landslide, no longer in coalition with the conservative NZ First Party, Labour launched a raft of reforms covering water, the health system, resource management and planning, broadcasting, and climate change.

Added to that was a renewed emphasis on Maori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi and decolonisation, which saw a new history curriculum for schools and increasing moves to co-Maori-European governance of public bodies.

Each reform provoked opposition, and by the middle of last year, after a prolonged anti-vax protest camp on Parliament’s lawn had finally been removed after a violent confrontation between protesters and police, a substantial anti-Ardern mood was evident, particularly in provincial New Zealand.

Data released in June last year indicated that police-recorded threats against Ms Ardern had almost tripled over three years.

Consequently, a long-standing tradition of the prime minister hosting a barbeque at the grounds where the Waitangi Treaty was signed on Waitangi Day had to be cancelled.

She leaves office with the bulk of her reform agenda either still waiting to be passed or in the very early stages of implementation.

So, at this stage, her legacy is primarily of style, of an accessible, empathetic politician who preferred “kindness” to confrontation and was ultimately less admired at home than she was overseas.

Source BBC 19^th January 2023

In contrast to all the pro-Ardern platitudes across the MSM came the following comments, surprisingly they are from the left-wing Economist.

Since being elected prime minister in 2017, at the age of 37, Ms Ardern has steered her country through a mass killing, a volcanic eruption and the covid-19 pandemic. At a time of rising populism, she gained a reputation for kindness. When a white-supremacist shot dead 51 mosque-goers in Christchurch in 2019 she donned a headscarf, embraced grieving families and coined a national refrain by declaring: “They are us.” In early 2020 she was quick to close New Zealand’s borders in response to covid. The death toll from the pandemic stayed low.

Her prowess also puffed New Zealand’s reputation overseas. At home, Ms Ardern won the last election in 2020 with 49% of the vote—the best result for any party since 1951. However, her pulling power has lately weakened. Successive polls have shown that Labour is trailing National, the main opposition party. One poll conducted in December found that 38% of New Zealanders would vote for the conservatives in the coming election, compared with 33% for Ms Ardern (though she was still their preferred prime minister).

That reflects an increasingly gloomy mood. Inflation in New Zealand is above 7%. Between 2020 and 2021 house prices rocketed by 25%, leaving New Zealand with some of the most expensive homes in the English-speaking world. Many Kiwis grumble that they cannot afford to buy or rent a property.

This is not what Ms Ardern promised. She came into office with lofty plans to “build a fairer, better New Zealand” by slashing child poverty, ending homelessness and erecting 100,000 cheap houses. But that “idealism collided hard with reality”, in the words of David Seymour of the right-wing act Party. Labour’s affordable-housing targets were scrapped. A well-intentioned policy to put homeless people into emergency accommodation is blamed for causing crime. Gangs are warring. Kiwis have been getting worried about a spate of ram-raids—an ostentatious kind of theft that involves driving cars through shop windows.

Source The Economist 19^th January 2023

The Economist piece was an eye opener – a piece of reality and honest, fact-based reporting in a pro-Ardern left-wing periodical.

Generally speaking, most of the MSM was full of puffery, praising Ardern to the heavens and emphasising how well she had done until she ran out of energy. The most vomit-inducing piece of sycophancy was the piece to camera from the BBC’s Australia correspondent in Sydney. It was so full of praise and adulation that it made Uriah Heep look like a hard-talking realist.

Times Radio had an interview with their Australia correspondent (who also covers New Zealand) and he was similarly skewed and ill-informed about New Zealand. It is as if the UK news correspondents get their news feeds from the Labour party’s press releases and PR department and never follow up with research.

The real issue now is who will replace Ardern and what deals will they have to do with the Maori faction in caucus, and what impact that will have leading into the election.