When Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday she would be resigning as New Zealand’s Prime Minister next month, she insisted it was not related to her poor opinion polling but because she no longer had “enough in the tank” to keep going.
But it is inescapable that the public mood had turned against her since her party’s landslide victory in 2020, with polling for Labour and her personally at their lowest point since she first came to power in 2017.
Fuelling that decline was voter dissatisfaction with the rising cost of living, which has left few governments untroubled.
But is there an added political and economic price that Ms Ardern has paid due to her stringent zero-Covid policy?
While high inflation has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and has affected global economies, countries that pursued the toughest anti-Covid measures, closing borders and imposing lockdowns for longest, are now experiencing serious economic difficulties as well as political backlash.
In China, President Xi Jinping was forced to end his zero-Covid policy last month after a wave of public protests in November.
The economic consequences of zero Covid in China have been stark: the country’s once-thriving export market has been battered by almost three years of shutdown, with exports declining by 9.9 per cent year on year in December, the sharpest decline since the start of the pandemic.
China’s latest GDP figures, out next week, are expected to miss a 5.5 per cent target – and although that sort of growth is what the UK can only dream of, it is a sign of how one of the world’s biggest economic powerhouses has taken a hit.
In New Zealand, the economy contracted in 2022 and is forecast to go into full recession this year.
While the same is true of the UK, analysts are now predicting Britain’s slump will be much shallower than previously feared, and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said this week that it looked like the “corner has turned” on inflation.
In New Zealand, voters have become dissatisfied not only with economic woes but rising crime and unemployment.
There are signs in Beijing of panic that years of lockdowns are starting to cause lasting economic damage and political danger for President Xi.
On the day that Ms Ardern announced she was stepping down, China’s vice premier Liu He was telling business executives in Davos that his country was “back” – in a clear attempt to catch up from the loss in investment in China during the pandemic.
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While the governments of New Zealand and China shared a policy of zero Covid, there are, of course, clear differences between the two countries – meaning that voters in New Zealand can democratically elect a new government if they wish, this October.
President Xi ended China’s zero-Covid policy abruptly in December, meaning that cases in that country have soared, particularly due to low vaccination rates among the elderly.
Ms Ardern ended her country’s policy a year ago, but kept some restrictions in place until last September. She continued to face widespread criticism for imposing vaccine mandates on public sector workers, which added to her growing unpopularity.
Despite her unpopularity in more recent months, her achievements in office should not be overlooked.
Since arriving as the world’s youngest ever female world leader in 2017, Ms Ardern consistently punched New Zealand above its political weight, and in leaving office she should be congratulated for having the self-awareness to know when to quit – something few of her global counterparts would ever do.
