Cam Slater: She’s Not the Messiah Anymore

Klaus Schwab’s puppet, Jacinda Ardern, is not the messiah anymore. In fact she isn’t even a very naughty girl. She is now known as a “liar”, “deceitful”, a “dictator”, “useless”, “disappointing”, “distracted” and “divisive”. That is all according to the latest Newshub poll:

Kiwis have dramatically changed their opinion about the Prime Minister’s performance – and the sentiment toward her is increasingly negative.

Newshub asked voters how to describe Jacinda Ardern and Christopher Luxon in our latest Newshub-Reid Research poll. One was labelled “arrogant”, and the other a “liar”.

From “amazing” to “fabulous”, there are no prizes for guessing who Labour MPs were describing – Ardern.

But National MPs are less complimentary, describing Ardern as “disappointing”, “distracted” and “divisive”.

Back in May 2020, at the peak of pandemic popularity, Newshub asked in our poll for one word to describe Ardern. “Amazing”, “good” and “compassionate” were among the answers.

In her hometown of Morrinsvillle, people are still feeling pretty kindly toward her.

“Hometown girl really,” said one woman.

“A lady trying to do a difficult job,” said another.

But the stardust has lost its sparkle.

Newshub asked the same question in our latest poll. This is the word cloud – the bigger the word – the more times it was mentioned.

The top responses were still “good”, “caring” and “kind”. But “useless” is right up there.

“Great”, “emphatic” and “capable” are still there too. But alongside them is “incompetent”, “fake”, “unreliable”, “liar”, and “evil”. A few even went as far as “deceitful” and “dictator”.

Newshub

Labour MPs are really trying to make it stick that Christopher Luxon is “inexperienced” and “new”, which is a bit rich coming from Ardern who was both of those before she became Prime Minister.

Labour was also trialling their attack lines in the house today, with a snarling and grumpy Prime Minister failing to grasp the import of the questions that both Luxon and David Seymour were asking.

             Click to view video

Christopher Luxon now has a brilliant opening, after Ardern’s description of him as inexperienced, to expose the abundant evidence that Ardern is a failure.

He could use his boyish good looks, wit and charm to answer back anyone calling him inexperienced by saying: ‘Look, I might be inexperienced at politics, but I have plenty of experience at success and winning. Jacinda Ardern, however, couldn’t build a house in a room full of Lego, has laid more track with Neve’s Thomas the Tank Engine set than for Auckland’s light rail and couldn’t build a bridge to get over herself. If she and Grant Robertson had applied for the job of Koru Lounge managers while I was at Air New Zealand they wouldn’t have even had an interview because their vision of a Koru Lounge would have been a tent on the tarmac with a very expensive model of what a Koru Lounge would look like in three years, so that people sitting there on cold hard plastic seating, eating cold sausage rolls and drinking lukewarm tea, could gaze upon what could be. And worse still they’d be telling everyone that their membership would also be five times more expensive.’

But chance would be a fine thing.

Labour appear rattled. They are being painted as insincere and uncaring on the cost of living and are dying in a ditch over RNZ/TVNZ and telling everyone that they know better than the 78 per cent of voters who want a tax cut.

Next year is going to be nasty, as yesterday’s Question Time showed. The Nasty Party is back.

One thing is certain now: the people aren’t happy and joyful about Jacinda Ardern, and that laughter she can hear is actually howls of derisive laughter at her and her coming fate.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE