Matua Kahurangi: Jacinda Ardern - New Zealand’s most hated export - live in London, because she can’t show her face at home

Picture this: a cozy Sunday afternoon in late November 2025, the kind where London’s fog clings to the Thames like a bad hangover. At some upscale venue, details fuzzy because who needs transparency when you’re selling inspiration, Jacinda Ardern will grace the stage for a How To Academy event titled A Different Kind of Power. There, in a fireside chat hosted by comedian Bill Bailey, she’ll regale a fawning audience with tales of empathetic leadership, her “compassionate” response to the Christchurch mosque attacks, her pandemic “heroics”, and the trials of being a mum in the spotlight. Tickets start at what feels like a small fortune, with premium ones tossing in a copy of her shiny new memoir. Subscribers get a discount because nothing says “people power” like paywalls and perks for the elite.

It’s billed as a beacon for the next generation. The story of a small-town Mormon fish and chip shop worker, who shattered doubts to become New Zealand’s youngest PM in 150 years. She’ll dish on reducing child poverty (spoiler: she didn’t), navigating motherhood while governing, and redefining power through kindness. Oh, and she’ll plug her post-PM gigs - Harvard fellowship, climate crusades, patron of anti-extremism calls - all while beaming as a “proud New Zealander.” One might almost mistake it for a TED Talk on cocaine, if not for the glaring irony - this is a woman who fled her own country after just five years in office, jetting off to global stages where adoring crowds don’t remember the receipts.

Ardern’s leadership wasn’t “a different kind of power.” It was a masterclass in performative virtue, cloaked in hugs and hashtags, that left New Zealand more divided, more broke, and more resentful than ever. She branded herself the queen of kindness, but what she delivered was control dressed as care - lockdowns that crushed small businesses while her government ballooned into a bureaucratic behemoth; policies that preached empathy but silenced dissent with the ferocity of a police state. Remember how you couldn’t be there with your dying parent? It sounded poetic until it morphed into mandatory quarantines, MIQ hellholes that trapped citizens in their own homes, and a housing crisis so acute that young Kiwis, her supposed “generation,” are still fleeing to Australia in droves.

Now, here she is, swanning into London for a 100-minute ego stroke, hosted by a comedian no less, because nothing pairs better with trauma tourism than a few laughs. Bill Bailey, bless his socks, will lob softballs about her “struggles and triumphs,” while the audience laps up the myth of the flawless feminist icon.

I dare you, Cindy, try pulling this stunt back home. Book a hall in Auckland or Wellington and see how many tickets sell. You’d probably a sell a few to the woke leftist cucks but you couldn’t pay me to watch her live.

The nation she claims to cherish, has moved on, and not with nostalgia. Polls and pub chatter alike paint her as the most reviled ex-leader in living memory, a symbol of overreach and underdelivery. Her approval ratings cratered in her final months, and even her handpicked successor couldn’t escape the stink.

Why the hate? Start with the economy she “saved” from COVID only to saddle with record debt and inflation. Child poverty? She promised to halve it; it barely budged, with more kids in cars than homes under her watch. The indigenous rhetoric rang hollow as Waitangi Day turned into annual shouting matches. Don’t get me started on the free speech fiasco, banning critics, demonetizing skeptics, all under the banner of “well-being.” Kindness? More like a velvet glove over an iron fist. New Zealanders didn’t vote her out; she bailed, citing burnout, leaving a mess for Christopher Luxon to mop up while she cashes in on the international lecture circuit.

Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.