One of the most obnoxious wokester players on the world stage surprised everyone Wednesday by saying she was calling it quits.

According to The Guardian:

 

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said she is resigning, in an unexpected announcement that came as she confirmed a national election for October.

At the party’s first caucus meeting of the year on Thursday, Ardern said she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job. “It’s time,” she added.

“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple,” she said.

Her term as prime minister will conclude no later than 7 February but she will continue as an MP until the election this year.

It couldn't have come soon enough.

She was a wokester fanatic whose gun-grabbing, China-kowtowing, sneeriness at conservatives, softness on crime, and draconian COVID lockdowns ran New Zealand's economy into the ground and it all just caught up to her.

Despite the international plaudits that brought from the international left, the reason she got out was that she was loathed at home, and wouldn't have been able to win re-election in the general election in October. She didn't want her name attached to the loss to her entire party that was coming. In the last month, her popularity fell to a stunning 29%, from an initial high of 70%.

What was the reason?

Most news accounts say the voters were fed up with her based on the hash she made of New Zealand's economy, with the Guardian hastening to say it couldn't possibly have been her fault.

The greatest propellant of Ardern’s slide sits mostly outside her control: a set of economic waves that will probably keep pummelling voters well into election year. New Zealand’s reserve bank, staring down an inflation rate of 7.2%, has announced its plans to engineer a “shallow recession” in 2023 to try to jolt the country out of the inflationary cycle. Already, the bank has hiked the official cash rate, driving up homeowners’ mortgage payments. Petrol prices started spiking mid-year, and grocery costs are up 10.7% annually.

 

Much of this is playing out across the world – but knowledge of the wider context seems unlikely to win over New Zealanders.

Kind of funny how this inflation stuff happens in all blue-run countries where free-spending expansion of government triggers lots of money-printing. 

Inflation, of course, is a monetary phenomenon, not a "global" issue, except in the sense that monkey-see, monkey-do seems to be the pattern with leftist leaders around the globe. They all turn on their money presses when they see the others doing the same, and COVID provided the perfect excuse.

Here's a lagniappe to that -- not only did she wreck her economy, she didn't seem interested in fixing what she broke. She got the nation out of its COVID lockdown only so she could get spending again:

Ardern emerged from Covid restrictions with a backlog of policy projects delayed by the intensity of pandemic governance.  A packed 2022 schedule included complex reform projects to address greenhouse gas emissions, resource management, water governance, a proposed merger of public broadcasters, and ailing health and criminal justice systems.

I don't see any economy there.

Like Joe Biden, it's all about the greenie agenda so favored by the global billionaire class. She trashed the economy and despite her protestations later on that she would focus on the economy, she didn't do anything to fix it. When you don't care about an economy, why would you 'waste time' fixing it?

Over at the Huffington Post, they rather comically don't see why she was unpopular at all:

Ardern, popular worldwide for her empathetic leadership, said in a speech that she no longer had the energy for the job. Although her popularity has dropped, she is credited with overseeing a ban on military-style assault rifles after mass shootings there and instituting strict COVID-19 measures that minimized the island nation’s death toll.

Credited? Try 'blamed,' boys.

At NBC News, they said Kiwi voter concerns about soaring crime were all in their heads:

Ardern had faced the prospect of a tough campaign in the next election, which she said Thursday would be held Oct. 14. Along with a perceived increase in violent crime, New Zealand is facing many of the same issues as other countries, including a housing crisis, income inequality and surging inflation.

Perceived? Like Chesa Boudin used to say of such voters? Silly them.

Several sources says it's a women's issue; here's a headline from a writer I've never heard of at Forbes who identifies herself in her bio as "a leading global expert on gender equity":

Why Jacinda Ardern’s Burnout And Decision To Quit Is The Norm For Most Women

Memo to Ardern: Try getting married before you have the baby, that's how other civilizations have worked it. Rope in the old man to do some of the kid stuff. In any case, given the resources a New Zealand prime minister would have for kidkare, it's a pretty dubious claim.

In short, Ardern was an "icon" for the left, you know, like she was a religion or something.

What the rest of us see is a leader who's wrecked the economy of her country though inflation and brought in a giant crime wave that was supposed to be fixed through her famous gun grab in the wake of a mass shooting by an Australian who didn't belong in their country. Now she wants to weasel out of a reckoning from the voters by slipping out of office early, probably lining up a big-dollar United Nations job the way a lot of retiring progressive leaders have done in their post-presidencies. Just ask Chile's Michelle Bachelet.

You can tell that's the case because apparently nobody in her party wants the leadership post now, based on news reports. In New Zealand's system, they've got about a week to pick a successor (or the matter will be turned over to the leftist party faithful) and so far nobody wants the job. Nobody wants to be a the helm of a ship that's going down.

These leftists have made a hash of things, and New Zealanders finally got tired of it. Ardern could no longer deny what was going on with that 29% popularity rating that just kept moving lower.

It goes to show that a progressive leader, with dictatorial tendencies, doesn't take long to grow very unpopular, even from an initial base of good will. 

Ardern leaves her office as a failure, despite the fakey-fake words of praise even from her (undoubtedly delighted) opponents at her exit.

Maybe that should be a warning to the likes of her coevals, such as Justin Trudeau and other budding young dictatorlets in still-unrigged electoral systems that changes are a-coming.

Good riddance, and not a day too soon.

Image:  Prime Minister's Office of Japan , via Wikimedia Commons (extracted) //  Government of Japan Standard Terms of Use (Ver.2.0). The Terms of Use are compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International