If you were to believe the mainstream media, Jacinda Ardern is little less than a secular saint. The universally-beloved queen of “Aotearoa New Zealand”. She who walks on the waters calms the seas and banishes disease with a wave of her magic wand.
Well, that’s if you believe the mainstream media — and why would anyone do that?
In reality, Ardern’s magic castle was always built on foundations of sand. Her polling was indeed high, but far from world-leading. Ardern’s poll high of 59.5% might sound impressive, but they’re piffling compared to other recent world leaders. Even Australia’s Kevin Rudd easily sprinted past Ardern at a high of 75%. Leading the pack by a country mile is G. W. Bush: in office, Dubya cruised to a staggering 90% approval rating, just pipping his Dad, who notched up 89%. Eat Dubya’s dust, Jacinda!
But Bush ended up taking a brutal 65% fall from the Olympian heights of pre-GFC polling. Jacinda is fast shaping up to do an even steeper Icarus dive.
According to the latest announcement, anyone known to be infected will now be required to lock themselves in their homes for 14 days. That is only the start of it, however, because anyone else in the house automatically becomes classified as a close contact; they must also now ‘isolate’ for the same period and then for an additional ten days as well. And if it so happens in those last ten days that one of the previously un-infected close contacts in your house tests positive then the whole process starts all over again. If Omicron spreads as quickly here as it has in other countries, it seems possible that at some point nearly every household will be forced into isolation.
Fortress New Zealand has also just closed its borders completely to outsiders. Tourists, visa-holders and citizens abroad will no longer be able to access the mandatory managed isolation and quarantine facilities that newcomers are required to pass through in order to visit. No date has been given for when the old system will resume.
New Zealanders who spent 2020 smugly patting themselves on the back for “beating covid” are getting a hard dose of reality salts. The Omnitragicomicon variant is evading MIQ faster than a DJ speed-dialling Clarke Gayford, and Kiwis are being punished with new restrictions, even as most of the world is skipping off into the post-covid sunlight.
Most striking of all, though, is the question of how any political leader this side of China could do all this without so much as the mildest challenge from what passes for the local media and scientific establishment, much less the culture at large.
We’ve got 50 million answers to that question.
But even 50 million in payola can only get you so far, for so long.
For many New Zealanders, faith in Saint Jacinda is starting to fade. Her poll ratings have been dropping fast since the end of last year, although she is still far ahead of her competition.
Spectator UK
Give it time. Ardern is already more than halfway to equalling Bush’s swan dive from grace, having already squandered 40% of her poll lead. As the latest restrictions grind on and the Ardern government becomes the last, loneliest, unloveliest Western government to cling to the pandemic narrative, Kiwi’s angst will only grow to the point that not even a strategically-timed wedding will work its old magic.
