She noted that Blair finished his last speech in Parliament in 2007 by saying “... and that is that, the end”.
“I still remember that moment,” Ardern said. “You can have that enormous career in politics, that period, and then suddenly, pouff. That’s that. It’s done, and you're gone.”
And so — pouff! — five and a half years after that interview, Ardern reached the end of the political road as Prime Minister of New Zealand (or “Aotearoa New Zealand” as she prefers to call the country).
Her sudden political irrelevancy was confirmed by polling taken after her resignation. It’s what anyone quitting a job, or a relationship, secretly fears most — that their colleagues or lover will be much, much happier without them.
That appears to be the case for Ardern. Two polls on Monday evening had Labour rocketing up the charts.
The 1News Kantar poll results released on Monday night had Labour rising by five points to 38 per cent to (just) overtake National.
Another poll from Newshub-Reid Research showed Labour rising nearly six percentage points to 38 per cent while National dropped 4.1 points to 36.6 per cent.
In the 1News Kantar Public poll, Hipkins also went from zero to 23 per cent as preferred PM, while Luxon was on 22.
Yesterday’s darling, Jacinda Ardern, plummeted to just five per cent — a figure presumably composed of loyal voters who either hadn’t heard she had resigned as prime minister or didn’t want to believe the terrible news, in much the same way the bereaved sometimes can’t believe their loved one is no longer going to walk in the door again.
Despite the brutal confirmation that she had become a liability to her party, and that voters prefer a Labour government without her at the helm, few doubt that Ardern will fall on her feet.
In fact, Ardern’s resignation and political death has undoubtedly been sensible in terms of her future — bringing to mind US writer Gore Vidal’s quip about the death of his literary rival Truman Capote as “a wise career move”.
Appearing on the AM show last week, political commentator Trish Sherson said:
"I thought [resigning] was a very calculated move from Ardern and probably based on the fact that she wanted to protect her personal brand, to go on and do other things, perhaps international roles.
"[It's] much harder to do that if you’ve lost an election as Prime Minister, than if you’ve got out, as she did before the polling."
Ardern prudently jumped ship before what promises to be a messy and possibly incendiary election campaign year kicks off in earnest.
And one that would have likely been humiliating for her as well given the intense animosity towards her had already prevented her from campaigning publicly in the Hamilton West by-election in December, which saw the Labour candidate win only 30 per cent of the vote.
By leaping for the lifeboats before the election wrangling gets properly under way, she has at least protected her battered reputation from further damage.
So far, her luck has held, with mostly indulgent post-mortem assessments of her resignation.
Curiously, commentators — both here and overseas — have told us that Ardern left “on her own terms”. This is a new and interesting use of the phrase given the polls for both Labour and her personally had previously been in freefall.
In fact, for a Prime Minister faced with a bruising and bitter election campaign when the peculiar diet of empathy and kindness she had recommended as a panacea for the nation’s ills had mostly made things worse, her choice of whether to continue in high office must have seemed to her to have been devised by Hobson himself.
Very few commentators have been unkind enough to point out that Ardern had become Prime Minister in name only — as the entrenchment debacle last November showed.
Has there been a more pitiful sight than a Prime Minister abasing herself by claiming a late-night deal stitched up between her own Minister of Local Government and a senior Green MP to entrench an anti-privatisation clause in Three Waters legislation was a ”team” mistake?
It was painfully obvious that Ardern had to prostrate herself before Queen Nanaia, who remained entirely unrepentant about the humiliation she had visited on her boss (and her new boss, Chris Hipkins, as well, who was obliged to go along with the charade).
Everyone could see who held the whip hand — and it certainly wasn’t Ardern.
Last week, NZ First’s Shane Jones made it clear on The Platform the main reason Ardern resigned was because she had “lost control of her own team” over Three Waters.
“She was unable to control Nanaia Mahuta, who has proven to be one of New Zealand’s most divisive politicians that God ever put breath into.
“What was initially an attempt to fix some drinking water has turned into a highly divisive and pulverising social experiment that has got nothing to do with poo pipes and infrastructure.
“Now it’s got everything to do with whether or not tribes should have a superior right [over water].”
The good news for Ardern is that much of the wider world doesn’t view her as the liability she had become for the Labour Party in New Zealand.
There has long been talk that, as Prime Minister, she was always conducting herself with one eye on the possibility of a plum job at the UN to take up post-politics, but she undoubtedly has other lucrative options as well.
By mid-2022, former UK Prime Minister Theresa May had reportedly earned more than £2.1 million ($NZ4 million) on the international speaking circuit in the three years since she left Downing St.
According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, last May the former Prime Minister received £109,000 ($NZ208,000) for a single, five-hour speaking engagement with the Danish Bar and Law Society in Copenhagen.
Ardern’s star power overseas will make her even more of a drawcard than Theresa May for any organisation that wants to burnish its marquee billing.
As a senior journalist said to me — if the awkward and uncharismatic Theresa May can do so well, “How much will Arden be able to make in the next three years? $10 million? $20 million? More?
“She’d be global box-office gold for the speakers-for-hire industry.”
When Ardern resigned, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted his best wishes for a “true global leader”:
“Whatever comes next, I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to champion her values and New Zealand across the world.”
Ardern’s “values” will make her a shoo-in for addressing any “progressive” organisation keen, like her, on crimping free speech, and for those in favour of a “tweaked” democracy where the principle of “one person, one vote of equal value” is seen as “overly simplistic” — as she told Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q&A last July.
And she will be prized by any organisation, of course, that wants to hear paeans to kindness and empathy, or jeremiads about misinformation and disinformation.
New Zealand has clearly had enough of all that, but the world will soon be Ardern’s glistening oyster.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
The 1News Kantar poll results released on Monday night had Labour rising by five points to 38 per cent to (just) overtake National.
Another poll from Newshub-Reid Research showed Labour rising nearly six percentage points to 38 per cent while National dropped 4.1 points to 36.6 per cent.
In the 1News Kantar Public poll, Hipkins also went from zero to 23 per cent as preferred PM, while Luxon was on 22.
Yesterday’s darling, Jacinda Ardern, plummeted to just five per cent — a figure presumably composed of loyal voters who either hadn’t heard she had resigned as prime minister or didn’t want to believe the terrible news, in much the same way the bereaved sometimes can’t believe their loved one is no longer going to walk in the door again.
Despite the brutal confirmation that she had become a liability to her party, and that voters prefer a Labour government without her at the helm, few doubt that Ardern will fall on her feet.
In fact, Ardern’s resignation and political death has undoubtedly been sensible in terms of her future — bringing to mind US writer Gore Vidal’s quip about the death of his literary rival Truman Capote as “a wise career move”.
Appearing on the AM show last week, political commentator Trish Sherson said:
"I thought [resigning] was a very calculated move from Ardern and probably based on the fact that she wanted to protect her personal brand, to go on and do other things, perhaps international roles.
"[It's] much harder to do that if you’ve lost an election as Prime Minister, than if you’ve got out, as she did before the polling."
Ardern prudently jumped ship before what promises to be a messy and possibly incendiary election campaign year kicks off in earnest.
And one that would have likely been humiliating for her as well given the intense animosity towards her had already prevented her from campaigning publicly in the Hamilton West by-election in December, which saw the Labour candidate win only 30 per cent of the vote.
By leaping for the lifeboats before the election wrangling gets properly under way, she has at least protected her battered reputation from further damage.
So far, her luck has held, with mostly indulgent post-mortem assessments of her resignation.
Curiously, commentators — both here and overseas — have told us that Ardern left “on her own terms”. This is a new and interesting use of the phrase given the polls for both Labour and her personally had previously been in freefall.
In fact, for a Prime Minister faced with a bruising and bitter election campaign when the peculiar diet of empathy and kindness she had recommended as a panacea for the nation’s ills had mostly made things worse, her choice of whether to continue in high office must have seemed to her to have been devised by Hobson himself.
Very few commentators have been unkind enough to point out that Ardern had become Prime Minister in name only — as the entrenchment debacle last November showed.
Has there been a more pitiful sight than a Prime Minister abasing herself by claiming a late-night deal stitched up between her own Minister of Local Government and a senior Green MP to entrench an anti-privatisation clause in Three Waters legislation was a ”team” mistake?
It was painfully obvious that Ardern had to prostrate herself before Queen Nanaia, who remained entirely unrepentant about the humiliation she had visited on her boss (and her new boss, Chris Hipkins, as well, who was obliged to go along with the charade).
Everyone could see who held the whip hand — and it certainly wasn’t Ardern.
Last week, NZ First’s Shane Jones made it clear on The Platform the main reason Ardern resigned was because she had “lost control of her own team” over Three Waters.
“She was unable to control Nanaia Mahuta, who has proven to be one of New Zealand’s most divisive politicians that God ever put breath into.
“What was initially an attempt to fix some drinking water has turned into a highly divisive and pulverising social experiment that has got nothing to do with poo pipes and infrastructure.
“Now it’s got everything to do with whether or not tribes should have a superior right [over water].”
The good news for Ardern is that much of the wider world doesn’t view her as the liability she had become for the Labour Party in New Zealand.
There has long been talk that, as Prime Minister, she was always conducting herself with one eye on the possibility of a plum job at the UN to take up post-politics, but she undoubtedly has other lucrative options as well.
By mid-2022, former UK Prime Minister Theresa May had reportedly earned more than £2.1 million ($NZ4 million) on the international speaking circuit in the three years since she left Downing St.
According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, last May the former Prime Minister received £109,000 ($NZ208,000) for a single, five-hour speaking engagement with the Danish Bar and Law Society in Copenhagen.
Ardern’s star power overseas will make her even more of a drawcard than Theresa May for any organisation that wants to burnish its marquee billing.
As a senior journalist said to me — if the awkward and uncharismatic Theresa May can do so well, “How much will Arden be able to make in the next three years? $10 million? $20 million? More?
“She’d be global box-office gold for the speakers-for-hire industry.”
When Ardern resigned, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer tweeted his best wishes for a “true global leader”:
“Whatever comes next, I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to champion her values and New Zealand across the world.”
Ardern’s “values” will make her a shoo-in for addressing any “progressive” organisation keen, like her, on crimping free speech, and for those in favour of a “tweaked” democracy where the principle of “one person, one vote of equal value” is seen as “overly simplistic” — as she told Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q&A last July.
And she will be prized by any organisation, of course, that wants to hear paeans to kindness and empathy, or jeremiads about misinformation and disinformation.
New Zealand has clearly had enough of all that, but the world will soon be Ardern’s glistening oyster.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
5 comments:
Another excellent reason, if one was needed, NOT to watch TV1 or TV3 News, who will stalk Ardern, as a groupie stalks a pop star, and relay us with everything wonderful she's doing to screw up the rest of the World, just like she screwed up NZ.
I'll bet that Ardern stories will lead the news as the journos wet their pants in their adoration of their idol.
Who would be mad enough to put her at the helm? After her effort in charge of NZ busted the Country.
It will be interesting watching, seeing if what ever she touches still turns to crap.
The Ardern Midas touch
Ironically, the higher one rises, the harder it is to really " stuff up" a situation - as one could do in a national context.
For example, at the UN, there are too many "minders" controlling your dangerous tendencies for the safety of the planet.
Kevin Rudd has tried for a top post for years - always thwarted ( to date).
Ms Ardern may be entering a lucrative job circuit - but she would be delusional to think that only she can save the world with her woke rhetoric. She should learn from Mr Rudd.
Correct Graham, but we know here only too well that all that glisters is not gold. I think it's befitting that she becomes the poster girl for misinformation /disinformation, for she's it personified.
"She’d be global box-office gold for the speakers-for-hire industry.”"
Pfft! Everyone knows the speaker circuit is just for laundering the money they made in backroom deals when in power.
Western politicians make millions' talking, yet before they resigned no-one wanted to see them, never mind listen!
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