Jacinda Ardern is called competent and kind, but her Covid policy is very cruel
Progressive mythology always demands a socialist Valhalla; a nation to be idealised and held as up an inspiration. For years, Scandinavia, and particularly Sweden, played this role. The stereotype was never entirely accurate; Scandinavian social democracy is a far cry from full-throated socialism, yet it remained influential. In the face of the pandemic, however, the tables have turned; now it is the libertarian Right who are lining up to applaud Swedish exceptionalism, while progressives liken their controversial strategy to a form of eugenics. With Sweden consigned to the naughty step, the Left needs a new country to fetishise, and they have alighted on New Zealand.
This was under way long before the virus arrived, thanks to NZ’s intoxicating combination of centre-Left politics and charismatic, young and, importantly, female leader: Jacinda Ardern. Her decisive leadership following the mass shooting in Christchurch propelled New Zealand’s PM to global prominence, and she has since enjoyed fawning media coverage surpassing even the high watermark of Trudeau-mania. The Left applauded NZ’s “wellbeing budget”, emphasising citizens’ happiness over GDP growth, and cheered when Ardern took her baby into the UN assembly hall. Their zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 has been especially influential. A group of weak-minded MPs and peers are currently urging our own Government to pursue a similar aim of total eradication.
We should be under no illusion – this is no model for New Zealand to follow, let alone a sophisticated global economy like ours. NZ may have contained the virus, for now at least, registering the lowest mortality rates in the OECD, but it has taken genuinely draconian policies and great economic pain to get there. The Ardern administration is eliminating rights on a scale more reminiscent of authoritarian China than a Western liberal democracy. Last week, the whole of Auckland was sent into lockdown after the government announced a grand total of four new cases in the capital. GDP has taken its biggest slide in three decades. A total ban on foreign arrivals has endured for months, with catastrophic results for tourism, directly employing
8.4 per cent of the workforce. New Zealanders returning from abroad must pay for the privilege of isolating in military-guarded facilities, to the tune of more than £1,500 per head. One man recently received a six-week jail sentence for hugging a friend quarantining in a detention centre.
The NZ experience should serve as a cautionary tale about the normalisation of overreach. Though the country has not recorded a single covid death since May, the government decided to postpone the autumn elections following the small-scale outbreak this month. Progressives, so alert to the subversion of democracy in the USA, had little to say about this extraordinary overreaction. An elimination strategy has made them hostages to fortune; with precedence
New Zealanders returning home must pay more than £1,500 per head to isolate. One man recently received a six-week jail sentence for hugging a friend in a detention centre
established, it will be politically toxic to change course. Ardern has ridden high in the polls so far, but if such disruption continues, public appetite for keeping the country virus-free at any cost will surely wane, and the recent outbreak, despite NZ’s geographic isolation and its draconian policy response, suggests no country can postpone the inevitable.
The implications of New Zealand’s autarchy go beyond its shores, too. Tourism accounts for a third of jobs in Fiji, Palau and Vanuatu; and two thirds of their visitors come from Australia and New Zealand. Yet amid mounting poverty and unemployment, island leaders’ pleadings for air bridges seem to have barely registered with an administration myopically focused on elimination. In seeking to be kind, the Ardern administration has ended up being very cruel indeed.
Enthusiasts for this model imply that elimination, like the happiness budget, and like Ardern herself, puts people above the callous vicissitudes of the balance sheet. As we are increasingly finding, the two cannot be so easily disentangled. Excessively harsh lockdowns have become a form of international virtue-signalling; something only wealthy nations can afford, but which promises catastrophe for the world’s poorest.
Before the recent spike, commentators lauded Ardern as being “on course to eradicate the virus completely”. The ambition was childish and hubristic in the extreme. Until the planet reaches a state of elimination, New Zealand will have to stay in indefinite isolation, with domestic lockdowns a likely fixture of life, perhaps for years to come. The economy cannot bear this for long. Nor can the people.