From the hero of Covid to zero. Jacinda Ardern, the PM of New Zealand, threw in the towel and walked away from politics to live a quiet life in the country, looking after her kid and recently proposed to boyfriend. It was never going to be easy donning a hijab in solidarity with the Muslim community after a horrific attack on a mosque, then facing down a pandemic.
For a while Jacinda Ardern lived a charmed life, defying gravity, flying higher than a helium balloon. Forbes had her down as the 34th most powerful woman in the world. A woman, young and progressive, what could ago wrong?
A life in politics is never easy. The world is full of crazies who are gunning for you, either on social media or actually with a weapon. She needed protection, an armed guard 24/7, with restricted social space. The abuse she received became a torrent as NZ’s housing crisis deepened in the global post pandemic cost of living increase, not one of her making and with little she or her government could do about.
The availability of cheap money had created a class of landlords who had little interest in building new houses because scarcity of property made their assets more valuable, with prices rising much faster than the interest rates of their bank loans. And when money became scarce, they continued – and still do – to raise rents, simply because they could. This landlord class became a phenomenon that her government simply did not have the funds to counterbalance. But the people of NZ are turning on her in favour of political parties that promise solutions they will not be able to deliver.
Same as it ever was, as the song goes. Same as it ever was. Jacinda saw the writing on the wall and it read: retire, let some one else deal with the abuse, while she raises her child with the beautiful name Neve Te Aroha, grows vegetables, walks the dog, and one day get a plum job in an international quango. She will outlive her detractors, become a national treasure, riding a white steed into NZ’s bright future. Because once you are in the room, you never leave.
