A week, as they say, is a long time in politics. But that’s not always true, since it only feels like last week since the Irish media was having its love affair with New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. It’s worth remembering that the following paragraph was once published in the pages of the Irish Times:
With English-speaking leadership to our immediate right and left dangerously flippant, narcissistic or erratic about the coronavirus, how spirit-enhancing, again, to see the leadership of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand.
Social media has been lauding her strength and empathy, calling her a great and just leader, “a legend”, and exhorting leaders worldwide to learn from how she has led her country in the face of terrorism, tragedy and now a pandemic.
A year before that, this paragraph:
But Ardern – who has worn simple black clothing since the tragedy and was formerly known more internationally for bringing her baby into the UN than her leadership style – has become the face of a leader who can be viewed with nothing but respect.
Even the normally sensible Finn McRedmond was not immune:
New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern seems to have emerged as a champion of governance – thanks to her decisive and early action, her straightforward messaging, and her humane interaction with the concerns of her citizens (declaring the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny to be essential workers).
There’s more where that came from, but you might have gotten the point by now: Western journalists, inclined as they are towards the left, and towards feminism, and towards seeing young left wing feminists triumphing over stale white men, veritably fell head over heels in love with New Zealand’s Prime Minister.
They cheered her, with some justification, for her response to a far-right terror attack. But they also cheered her, with no justification whatsoever, for her draconian covid policies, and her utterly extreme abortion law, and her general intolerance of dissent. When one of her Ministers was exposed having an affair with a staffer, what would have been “another scandal” for, say, Boris Johnson’s Government, was instead pointed to as an example of Ardern’s strong leadership when she eventually sacked the Minister. Blessed Jacinda could, and would, do no wrong, and her name was not to be blasphemed.
When Ardern took a dig at Ireland, during covid, suggesting that New Zealand would come out of lockdown faster than we would thanks to its zero covid policy, she was again cheered. She turned out to be wrong about that, again, but that was hardly the point. Supporting Ardern was never about whether her policies were working, but about how they were coming to pass: We were being sold an entirely imaginary version of leadership: Wise women, sitting around a table, listening to the scientists and the experts and calmly making decisions without bluster or drama, in a way that feeble men could only dream of. She was presented to us not as a leader, but as an avatar of something else: The future we might have, if only we would discard the old politics in favour of a new, feminist future.
But the reality has always been that she’s just another politician. And a politician, it turns out, who may struggle to serve more than one term:
Jacinda Ardern’s chances of re-election are looking shakier, with new polling indicating that New Zealand’s right-leaning coalition has enough support to form government.
The latest 1 News/Kantar poll, taken as the cost of living soars in New Zealand, marked Ardern’s worst result in the preferred prime minister stakes since her tenure as leader began. Despite falling three points as preferred PM, however, she is still ahead of National’s Chris Luxon, 30% to 22%.
The centre-right National party remained ahead of the Ardern-led Labour party, at 37% to 33%. If National joined forces with its traditional partner, the libertarian-right Act party, on 11%, the two would have enough seats to form a government.
Her unpopularity should not be surprising. In fact, the most extraordinary thing about the Ardern love-in in the Irish media was how much it was blind to the PM’s own faults. For example, we heard much of a “new and consensual” leadership style, based on consensus. In fact, New Zealanders who are sick of Ardern are sick of the opposite: A leadership that has been dictatorial and unrelentingly authoritarian. Some of the things she has said, and done, are almost Orwellian: She pronounced, for example, that Government itself “was the only source of information that New Zealanders could trust”. She imprisoned people in New Zealand long after it was clear that border closures were not working. New Zealand now faces the same covid crisis everybody else did – just later, and after much suffering.
And of course, the Irish media that lauded these decisions as they were made has never, in turn, noted the consequences. That has been left to New Zealand voters, who are, I think, increasingly and justifiably sick of being preached at, and are ready for a return to the old, right wing men after all.
And of course, if she does lose the next election, as seems increasingly likely, be prepared for the usual analysis: Sexism, bigotry, misogyny, and a simple underappreciation of Ardern’s gifts will be cited as reasons for her defeat. In the end, you see, it will be the usual story: The world just won’t have deserved Jacinda Ardern.