You have to admit it. Jacinda is a master. She is streets ahead of everyone else in this election campaign. She campaigns just about every day, appearing on our screens at 1 pm, and if she can’t make it, usually due to her 3-day weekends, then one of her henchmen will be there instead. Yes, this is the advantage of being the incumbent, but Jacinda is milking it for all it is worth.
And there is little or nothing that the other parties can do about it. As Simon Bridges found out, if you criticise “the Princess”, it can be the end of your political aspirations, and she has plenty of media henchmen who have her back. Take this one for example.
Co-host of The Project Jesse Mulligan has stern words for Aucklanders who are unhappy at having to stay in alert level 2.5 for another week – “what’s wrong with you?”
“I honestly don’t know what sort of person is seeing infectious people go to funerals and church services and aerobics classes and says ‘well this is going awesome, let’s relax things up a bit’,” he said on Monday during The Project.
What kind of people are they, Jesse? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t want to lose their jobs. Maybe they don’t want to watch their businesses go into receivership because of extended periods in lockdown that were not really necessary. Maybe they would like to be able to pay the mortgage and feed their kids. They are not like you who, even if your job with TV3 is not safe, you still have your stint at RNZ to fall back on. Not everyone is quite so lucky as you, Jesse.
But Jacinda’s real skill is obvious. By keeping us all in lockdown, particularly Auckland, week after week, she is effectively completely silencing the other parties, who are getting little or no airtime, and are unable to campaign properly because of COVID restrictions.
Brilliant. Joseph Stalin would be proud. It is an even better approach than Vladimir Putin’s strategy of poisoning opposition politicians, or of Nicolas Maduro’s policy of keeping the next election results locked up in a safe. After all, you never know who might accidentally open the safe.
There will always be a core of National voters who will turn out no matter what, but the damage being done to minor parties is enormous. Much as I dislike NZ First and also the Greens, they are part of our government and as such deserve a chance to be heard. Ditto ACT, New Conservatives and all the others. Agree with me or not, but that is what democracy is all about. But Labour is hellbent on governing alone, and as such is employing a strategy that is decimating all other parties, including their coalition partners. It is very effective and it is working. NZ First is polling around the 2% mark (at last polling, whenever that was) and the Greens hover around the 5% mark, acknowledging themselves that they are on the brink of oblivion.
Yes, I hate the Greens. But this is not a democratic election campaign.
If you doubt what I am saying, just think for a moment about Jacinda’s approach to the rugby. No, we couldn’t hold the Rugby Championship in New Zealand because we insisted on quarantine rules being applied, and there was a risk, that Australia is prepared to take, that one player might have COVID and the whole tournament is called off. However, she is hellbent on making sure the Bledisloe Cup goes ahead here, even though it means importing Australian rugby players, who run exactly the same risk of having COVID as before. In fact, it is worse, because some of the Bledisloe matches are being held before the Rugby Championship takes place, in October… with one possibly being played on election night. Funny that.
Jacinda does not want the public to be reminded on election day of her intransigence and the fact that she has no Plan B. She wants us all to have the warm glow of the All Blacks thrashing Australia as we all head to the polls, even though a strategy of holding all the games in one country in the present climate where there are quarantine restrictions makes much more sense. Jacinda doesn’t care about that. She has an election to win.
In the long run, seeing the end of NZ First and the Green party will be an enormous benefit to New Zealand politics. Winston Peters has been a corrosive influence in the last 3 years, and the Greens are just economic saboteurs. Both should have expected a bit more from Labour and Jacinda though. After all, it was Winston who put her into the role of prime minister. The Greens, who are making noises about sitting on the crossbenches and forcing Labour to come to them when they need the numbers, have supported Labour throughout its first term, sometimes in conflict with their own party’s values.
None of it matters to Jacinda. In the shadows of Stalin, Putin and Maduro, dictatorship awaits. Nothing will ever taste quite so good.
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