What if other countries had Jacinda as their president?

Written By: - Date published: 8:22 pm, February 22nd, 2021 - 39 comments
Categories: jacinda ardern, leadership, Politics - Tags:

39 comments on “What if other countries had Jacinda as their president? ”

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  1. Adrian Thornton 1
    22 February 2021 at 8:58 pm

    Guess they would have the same obscene ponzi scheme driven housing and homeless crisis we have, the same uncontrolled and still accelerating rate of wealth inequality, the same backward thinking student debt driven higher education system, the same useless incremental answers to climate change that we have…..no wait most of our contemporary western governments have these very same problems already, and strangely enough they are all centrist liberal free market governments (to more or lesser degrees) just like our own beloved Arden and her New Zealand labour Party…starting to see a bit of a pattern here…maybe time for a change of political ideology, something progressive, something brave and bold and fearless?

    Turn labour left!

    • McFlock 1.1
      22 February 2021 at 10:00 pm

      Ok.

      But I reckon US and UK would have been better with some basically competent leadership.

      Sweden, maybe not so much: Lab6 has been largely science-led, but in Sweden their chief epidemiologist is a dick.

      Which countries would have been worse off with Ardern in charge over the past year than the leadership they actually had, in your opinion?

      • Adrian Thornton 1.1.1
        23 February 2021 at 8:29 am

        @McFlock, Comparing the leadership of NZ to the leadership of the UK/USA is like people of the Left using the Sweden has this and that comparison to their respective countries, personally I think it is an exercise in futility, that’s why I (try to) never do it.

        Yes I agree Ardern has handled Covid well in New Zealand, with our very specific sets of circumstances geography and population density etc, who knows what she would have come out of this like had NZ had a population of 150 million and other countries all dealing with it differently on our boarders?

        • mike 1.1.1.1
          23 February 2021 at 10:53 am

          Pretty good, I'd say.

          Certainly better than Boris Johnston.

          He lives on an island too.

          • gsays 1.1.1.1.1
            23 February 2021 at 3:33 pm

            His island has an under sea tunnel with lots of lorries and stuff coming in…

            • Tricledrown 1.1.1.1.1.1
              24 February 2021 at 9:16 am

              Boris Johnstons handling of the UK's covid response was a cluster f…

              No doubt there would have been C19 in the community but the UK has had one of the worst death rates.

        • McFlock 1.1.1.2
          23 February 2021 at 11:56 am

          While you might try to never do it, it's the title of the post.

          I'm not sure it just applies to covid response, too.

          • Adrian Thornton 1.1.1.2.1
            23 February 2021 at 1:21 pm

            That was the point I was making, Covid will be controlled to a more or lesser degree as time passes, and life goes on, and the same pressing issues remain….still undealt and even exacerbated by both Labour and National.,,because they both have fundamentally the same political/economic ideology

            You know I took the dogs for a walk yesterday, on the short walk though some trees to the dog park.three cars were parked under various trees with our fellow citizens living in them..one car a small hatch had what appeared to be a woman with a child set up with a tiny tent, forced to live like dogs all for the sake of this fucking obscene "housing market"…it is a sight like this was unimaginable only fifteen years ago. How anyone can witness sights like these and not Critique the government (whom ever is in power) is what I don't understand. I just assumed it was our civic duty to at any opportunity pressure power on these matters?

            • McFlock 1.1.1.2.1.1
              23 February 2021 at 1:36 pm

              Indeed. If Ardern were president of the US, UK, or some other country, they might have homelessness instead of a 1 in 500 death toll from covid. /sarc

              Criticism where due needs to be matched by credit where due, otherwise one might be mistaken for being perennially sour.

              • Adrian Thornton …
                23 February 2021 at 4:54 pm

                I have always said Labour handled Covid well, in fact I have acknowledged that much on this site more than once, however that they and Ardern have done so does not mean they get a free pass to their continued dismal incrementalist response to the same shit that has been dragging this country down since 1984…but I will be sure to mention your hypothetical analysis of Ardern's Covid response were she in power in the US/USA to the homeless crew around the corner from work.

                • McFlock …
                  23 February 2021 at 5:15 pm

                  Again, not mine. The title of the post.

                  As for dismal incrementalism, politics is the art of the achievable. I believe that Labour is being a bit more conservative than it needs to be in the last few months, but I can understand the desire to not overplay one's hand for short term gains that would be quickly reversed by PM JuCo.

                  As I've said previously, Labour has some political capital it can spend on unpopular but correct policies. But weeping and gnashing your teeth for a Norman Kirk-style government now is just hoping for a blatant tory government in 2023 that will reverse any gains with compound interest.

            • woodart 1.1.1.2.1.2
              23 February 2021 at 1:37 pm

              so, apart from whingeing, what did YOU do about those people who had worse lives than your dogs. did you throw them a bone, give them some spare change, or just walk away, feeling like the gov should pick up the slack, while feeling grateful that you and your dogs had somewhere to sleep.? dont just think its the governments problem and you are a bystander. by walking on, you are just as much at fault as all the polies you are slagging off.

              • solkta …
                23 February 2021 at 1:59 pm

                Now that is just silly. There are reasons why we have a government.

                • woodart …
                  23 February 2021 at 2:32 pm

                  so we can avoid personal responsibilty and delegate the nasty side of life to someone else?

                  • Incognito …
                    23 February 2021 at 3:28 pm

                    We can vote for a kind of kind Government that governs for all New Zealanders. Or we can vote for one that serves our self-interest and feelings of entitlement.

                    • woodart …
                      23 February 2021 at 3:56 pm

                      or, to be really pro-active, and a good citizen , we, individually can do our best every day, and not just once every three years.

                    • Incognito []
                      23 February 2021 at 4:16 pm

                      True, true, we do, we do. However, throwing a bone or spare change is like a plaster and does not change the root cause. Even if we were to throw a bone every day, it would only amount to 365 bones, which is just a drop in the ocean. Only Government has the power to act on behalf of ‘the team of five million’ because that’s the way things have been set up. In fact, it is their duty and responsibility.

                  • Gabby …
                    23 February 2021 at 10:42 pm

                    Well yes, pretty much.

    • Charlie 1.2
      22 February 2021 at 10:16 pm

      A change from whinging whining know it all but really know little moaners that incessently criticise the PM and Labor would be a good change. Get a life and get knowlegeable about the progressive policies the PM and this govt have achieved under very trying times. Of course you would do better eh, not likely your’e just all piss and wnd.

      • Adrian Thornton 1.2.1
        23 February 2021 at 8:35 am

        @Charlie, Critiquing all our leaders is a civic duty; the reason why we have ended up with the obscene problems I listed above (and still getting worse as we speak) is exactly because of arse kissers like you who support both Labour and National.

      • mauī 1.2.2
        23 February 2021 at 8:04 pm

        "…progressive policies the PM and this govt have achieved under very trying times."

        There's progressive policy… and then there's Labour and papering over the cracks policy.

  2. Stuart Munro 2
    22 February 2021 at 9:38 pm

    I could point to a lot of things that still need to be addressed. But there is much to support too. I got bailed up the other day, while I was fishing quietly, by an antivaxer loon. There are forces at work to dishonestly undermine or oust this government, and these I will resist by supporting it. Who knows, maybe some longstanding grievances will be addressed. But TINA – the old catchcry of the dishonest Right, has turned in their hands. There simply is no credible alternative.

    • AB 2.1
      23 February 2021 at 1:24 pm

      Excellent multi-tasking there SM – 3 things at once:

      • realising that Labour are a bit crap in some important areas
      • while simultaneously understanding that they are vastly better than the alternative and deserving of support
      • fishing

      Did you catch anything?

  3. Ad 3
    22 February 2021 at 9:52 pm

    Prime Minister Ardern is one of the very best leaders of any kind we have ever had.

    There are more reasons than are listed by the little video note.

    But unlike the Key regime this is no vacuous populist. Over the last year in particular she and Robertson have led policies perfectly suited to the multiple crises we have faced.

    Plenty (including myself) have wondered what she ought to do with this amount of political capital. But it is also the case that sustaining the unity of the nation for this amount of time has in fact started to revive the very idea of what we are as a country, and who we can then imagine we can together become.

    It's also a standard modernist trope – particularly of the old left – that our politics ought to be written like an Arthur Schlesinger speech for John F Kennedy: that grand and somewhat heroic narratives are grand because what they narrative is the social imaginary itself.

    Through the multiple crises we have been led through over four years, we are just now getting back to being able to imagine that there could be a social imaginary once more.

    That is a very, very large achievement for a country that has endured so much damage in such a short moment.

    • Sanctuary 3.1
      23 February 2021 at 7:24 am

      One result of COVID may be, in the short term at least, a reinforcement of the social contract. Plenty of often villainised white middle class people lost their businesses or suffered economic privation during the COVID lockdowns, and they generally wore this loss stoically for patriotic reasons and it was just the right thing to do to help protect poorer and browner New Zealanders from the potentially catastrophic impact COVID might have had on communities with high co-morbidities.

      https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/02/sixty-nine-percent-believe-government-should-increase-income-support-for-those-in-need-survey.html

      Hopefully, two years of isolation in fortress NZ and a collective victory in keeping the virus at bay means we all start looking at our fellow NZer's less through the lens of race, class and culture wars and more through having lived through a shared seminal national experience.

      I guess that is why I like the idea of a Pandemic Response Star to be properly gazetted and awarded once this is over.

  4. Mat Simpson 4
    23 February 2021 at 12:31 am

    " Prime Minister Ardern is one of the very best leaders of any kind we have ever had "

    NO she is not she is a opportunist who is following neo liberal thinking that will never solve the crisis because market economics created the disaster she still supports,

    Build back better is just another bullshit marketing slogan like Key's a brighter future.

    She is a fraud like the rest of her caucus who have coat tailed they way into parliament for the perks and super and only have the best intentions to deal with the utter inhumanity they say they want to address without having the first clue on what is causing this disaster in the first place.

    This is not LABOUR they are Social Democrats which means well meaning capitalists who pretend they care about the working poor and the destitute.

  5. Dal Tarrent 5
    23 February 2021 at 6:52 am

    I imagine governing little old New Zealand is a far simpler problem that managing the same for even one of the smaller states in the USA . Send Jacinda over to the North East and lets see if we can get her in the running for the Governorship of Connecticut or Rhode Island maybe and see how she goes .

    • Incognito 5.1
      23 February 2021 at 7:13 am

      She’s Kiwi, mate. She’ll be right. You lack imagination and a sense of humour.

      • Dal Tarrent 5.1.1
        23 February 2021 at 10:12 am

        If you mean the entire article was a joke – then I agree in principal – but the author appeared to be in earnest .

      • Adrian Thornton 5.1.2
        23 February 2021 at 10:22 am

        "She’s Kiwi, mate. She’ll be right"….Jacinda and that statement are like oil and water, I spent years of my youth and twenties working amongst men ( and towards the the end of my time doing that work, the occasional woman) on building sites, building relocation crews etc, the very type of people that phrase was coined for…to attach it to a life long bureaucrat is an insult to them, imo.

        These Liberal Centrist free market capitalists have already co-opted the our Labour Party and sucked all of the oxygen out of the actual Progressive Left…isn’t that enough?

    • woodart 5.2
      23 February 2021 at 4:05 pm

      well, no. governing a small state with the population of NZ is far simpler than being P.M. of an entire country. a state governor has far less to oversee,as federals from washington make many decisions and pay many of bills. and many of the smaller things that our gov does here are palmed off to local counties, schooling, police etc. and state governors in u.s. dont have any real parliamentary duties, select commitees etc. to do. I would say any half-wit could be a state governor, and that has and continues to happen.

  6. Tricledrown 6
    24 February 2021 at 9:35 am

    Adrian Thornton only a very small percentage of voters support policies of the original labour Party largely an offshoot of the union movements.

    Unions have been busted right down to being fringe operators.

    Now for the Labour Party to survive it has to be centrist ,if you want to change things complaining isn't going change Labour,how many parties have tried to form on the left all have failed!

    The Greens are the closest to the old Labour Party .

    Labour lost its edge after 1959 barely got 3 years in 1972 since then the routing of the out of control badly behaved union movements which damaged itself by holding the country to ransom turned New Zealanders completely off Union membership.

    So as a consequence we have a Neo Liberal Centre right and Centre left main parties.

    [Corrected typo in user name]