Armstrong on Ardern
John Armstrong writes:
Jacinda Ardern sold herself to the voting public last year as a politician who was as fresh and pure as driven snow.
During the past couple of weeks, her prime ministership has looked about as fresh and pure as mud-caked slush.
She has been deluged with unwanted distractions which have dominated the headlines and made it commensurately difficult to talk about the things she would prefer to have highlighted by the media.
Dealing with such an unrelenting litany of political mishaps goes with the territory of prime minister, however.
All of a sudden Wonder Woman is looking like just another struggling premier side-tracked by side shows.
Brand Jacinda would seem to be metamorphosing into Calamity Jacinda.
Calamity Cindy has a ring to it 🙂
Well might Ardern wish that Peters was the Invisible Man.
He further badly let her down in his other role as Foreign Minister.Â
She bent over backwards to stem the criticism rightly heaped upon him for his woeful handling of New Zealand’s response to the attempted murder of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.
Peters veered close to provoking a foreign policy crisis through point-blank refusal to use the words “assassination”, “nerve agent”, “Russia” and “responsible” in the same sentence.
And he still won’t!
The Greens’ parliamentary wing now looks likely to yield to pressure from the wider party membership to block legislation instigated by Peters which would see MPs indulging in party-hopping chucked out of Parliament.
Good.
Ardern needs to read the Riot Act to Peters and Shaw. She also needs to take heed of it herself.
She let herself down while clearing up the mess created by Peters’ botched handling of the Russia problem. And badly so.Â
Her claim this week that New Zealand had been ahead of the international pack in declaring Moscow was behind the attempted murder of Skripal was as outrageous as it was audacious as it was patently incorrect.
She made reference to a statement issued under Peters’ name which condemned the “totally repugnant” use of chemical weapons as a tool for assassination.
Peters’ statement, however, offered not a word on whether responsibility for the assassination attempt could or should be sheeted home to Moscow.
In marked contrast, Britain’s other allies showed no hesitation in laying the blame for the nerve agent attack squarely at Russia’s door.
No-one who has kept tabs on how events unfolded will be fooled by the Prime Minister’s blatant and shameless attempt to rewrite history.Â
She will get away with it on this occasion. The conduct of foreign policy is not something the public cares that much about.
Ardern would be well-advised not to make a habit of playing fast and loose with the facts, however. Her patter might be silky smooth. But she cannot expect to talk her way out of every predicament that she finds herself enmeshed in.Â
Sooner than later, she will be caught out.Â
Voters have invested much hope in her being a politician who can be trusted absolutely. To make fools of those who have shown such faith in her would be to invite a backlash truly terrible in its scale and vitriol.
It’s going to be an interesting next 30 months!