Rita Panahi: Jacinda Ardern’s real legacy is hypocrisy and division
The litany of Jacinda Ardern’s broken promises and failures was largely ignored by her fans in the media as well as Leftist activists and politicians.
Rita Panahi
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The real legacy of Jacinda Ardern, not the sugar-coated media fantasy, is one of incompetence, hypocrisy and division.
She leaves New Zealand in a terrible state with increasing rates of inequality, homelessness and a crippling cost-of-living crisis. Who would’ve thought shutting down the whole country over a single case of Covid-19 was going to have grave economic and social consequences?
Along with Canada’s Justin Trudeau no modern leader better exemplifies the phrase “style over substance” than the outgoing New Zealand prime minister.
Ardern’s virtue signalling and claims about kindness and compassion were too often nothing more than empty moral posturing.
As bestselling author Douglas Murray expressed so beautifully, Ardern was the queen of “performative caring”.
That was enough to impress the media and she enjoyed one of the longest political honeymoons in modern politics.
But finally New Zealanders woke up.
Facing what looked like certain defeat at the polls, Ardern decided to jump before she was pushed.
Labour’s numbers have dropped to their lowest level since 2017 with only 33 per cent backing the party, according to polling released last month.
On current numbers it had no chance of forming government with its coalition partners and was looking at a landslide loss.
Ardern’s failures extend well beyond her government’s cruel Covid-era policies that saw the supposed champion of women ban vulnerable pregnant New Zealanders from returning home to their families but granted permission to celebrity DJs to enter the country.
Ardern was weak on China, implemented divisive race-based policies and her flagship ‘KiwiBuild’ scheme to construct 100,000 homes by 2028 will be lucky to complete a tenth of that figure.
From 2017 to May 2022 it managed to complete just 1,300 homes.
But the litany of broken promises and failures was ignored by Ardern’s many fanboys and girls in the media as well as Leftist activists and politicians.
The gushing in the past week has been nauseating and often comically divorced from reality.
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