A shock resignation, and the enduring hate towards Jacinda Ardern

Friday, 4 April 2025

After five years in the top job and a summer break to reflect on it, Jacinda Ardern decided her time as Prime Minster was up. But the vitriol directed at her did not cease, and in many respects still hasn’t.

In this five-part series, senior journalist Lloyd Burr looks back at this fascinating, turbulent, and tumultuous time in New Zealand politics and investigates the dramatic rise of Ardern, her fall and how the country fell out of love with her. This is part five

Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary on January 19, 2023 as journalists gathered at Napier’s War Memorial Centre for Jacinda Ardern’s press conference.

But after some opening remarks about Labour’s summer retreat, her tone became reflective: how many years she’d served, the privilege of the job, and how you need more than a full tank to do it.

“This summer I had hoped to find a way to prepare not just for another year but another term because that is what this year requires. I have not been able to do that,” Ardern said.

She paused and took a breath with one of those expressions that holds back emotion.

“So today I am announcing that I will not be seeking re-election and that my term as Prime Minister will conclude no later than the 7th of February.”

Cameras started clicking. Everyone was in disbelief.

She’d been in the role for 5 years, 2 months, and 24 days.

The end of an era

Ardern's chief press secretary Andrew Campbell still vividly remembers when she broke the resignation news to him.

“I hugged her and I said from a personal level and as a friend, I completely understood. From a political level, I would have loved her to stay on. But I think at that point, I could see just how challenging and difficult the job was to her. She left how she arrived, on her own terms.”

Health Minister Andrew Little was in Napier and says Ardern’s resignation shocked him. “We all were aware that by the end of 2022 she was just exhausted. We were all saying, ‘You need a decent break’,” he says.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw says it didn’t come as too much of a surprise to him. While Ardern had confided she was burnt out and exhausted, she did not feel like she was jumping from a sinking ship.

“She really did believe that they could win a third term and she said when she resigned ‘I'm not leaving because I think we can't win, I'm leaving because I think we can and I don't have the personal capacity to lead us through a third term’,” Shaw recalls.

Ardern’s official last day as Prime Minister was January 25 and she gave her valedictory speech in Parliament on April 5, when she left politics altogether.

Why did Ardern’s popularity collapse?

Within the space of two years, Labour’s polling dived from more than 60% in mid-2020 to the low-to-mid 30s before she resigned.

Political commentator Dr Grant Duncan says many elements contributed to the collapse in popularity:

• Ardern’s personal brand was innately linked with Covid, and all that stemmed from it

• Her communication style both made and broke her leadership, with Kiwis having ‘Ardern fatigue’

• National got a new leader in Christopher Luxon, luring centre voters

• Co-governance was poorly managed and explained

• Unpopular policies were pursued, with Ardern seemingly losing control of ministers

• Covid mandates fractured social cohesion

• Job losses, inflation, the cost of living, and skyrocketing interest rates began biting

At the 2023 election, months after Ardern’s resignation, Labour got just 26.9% of the vote. Dr Duncan says if Ardern had still been in charge, it may well have been lower.

“She did the right thing politically for her party as well, because I think she realised that too much of the discontent was focused on her personally rather than on policies,” he says.

Why did people turn against Ardern and why the ongoing angst?

While Ardern has moved on to new ventures and personal projects overseas - including getting a Damehood in June 2023 - there’s a portion of the country that’s still triggered by her.

At the races recently, a woman told me “not to mention that woman’s name”. At a winery in the Bay of Plenty, another told me Ardern “ruined the country”. I even have a relative who has to leave the room when Ardern’s TV presenter husband Clarke Gayford is on the telly.

Social media is still rife with anti-Ardern rhetoric. It’s as vitriolic as when she was in power.

Is sexism to blame?

Sexism has been around far longer than Ardern’s tenure but it came up many times during her time as an MP. Former National Party leader Simon Bridges was accused of sexism for calling her a “part-time Prime Minister” and commentator Graeme Lowe called Ardern a“pretty little thing’ on morning television in 2015. Labour’s Grant Robertson once called out the“ignorant, sexist bullshit” Ardern had to put up with.

Dr Suze Wilson, an Associate Professor in Leadership at Massey University, says a lot of Ardern hatred is because of her gender.

“For most people, the kind of mental model of a leader is strong, tough, decisive, and bold. Which then connects and overlaps with people's ideas of how men are supposed to be conventionally.

“So they end up basically having a mental model of a leader as a man,” she says. It leaves people “unconsciously suspicious” when women get into leadership and start showing empathy.

“People are feeling threatened that here's this woman - and in the case of Ardern, a very high profile, very powerful woman - getting in their faces and telling them things they don't want to do. People take it as a real personal affront,” Dr Wilson says, adding the words used by Ardern’s detractors are often loaded with sexism.

“So ‘She's a witch, she's a bitch, she's an evil demon’, and the memes, they focus extensively on her appearance,” she says.

Dr Wilson even says the term ‘Jacindamania’ has sexist connotations because it suggests being enthusiastic about a woman leader is “some kind of manic state.”

Dr Duncan says the sexism argument doesn’t explain why a significant portion of the nation turned away from Ardern: “You can't say that between 2020 and 2023, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders suddenly became misogynists and decided not to support Labour anymore. It's just not a good enough explanation for what went wrong.”

The role of economic decline

The economy in the wake of Covid was turbulent and tough for most Kiwis. Some parts of it worked, other bits battled, while some disappeared altogether.

The global supply chain delays, constant inflation, cost of living pressures, and interest rate hikes were yet another crisis Ardern had to face. Many of these flow-on effects are still being felt, and often she’s still being blamed.

Listen to any Parliamentary debate and you’ll hear the current Government still blaming the Labour Government for the current economic woes. The ACT Party’s recent email to supporters described it like this:

“The last decade has consisted of economic paralysis and cultural division as Governments dumped years of live-and-let-live liberalism to focus on identity politics. Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau were the pin ups for this dismal movement, managing to tank their respective countries’ economies and make everyone angry at each other.”

Dr Duncan says economic pain is undoubtedly the biggest reason for Ardern’s downfall and some of the residual disdain.

“Labour had failed to bring the country together, failed to see what was going on, didn't want to own up to the resistance that was happening, were blaming people for being anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, racists, misogynists, all those kinds of things, ” he says.

Covid, fringe groups, and retaliation

Restrictions to people’s freedoms for prolonged periods of time, combined with mask and vaccine mandates saw the emergence of numerous retaliatory groups. Phase One of the Royal Commission says the three main groups were The Freedom Alliance, The Freedom and Rights Coalition, and Voices for Freedom.

Together they organised the occupation of Parliament, which the report says was fuelled by “disaffection over the introduction of vaccine mandates - and to some extent, other pandemic measures - combined with the increasing circulation of false and misleading information about the pandemic and response, from both domestic and international sources”.

When I asked Voices for Freedom for an interview about Ardern’s premiership, they handed me a pile of emails they’d sought from their supporters regarding Ardern’s legacy.

They’re an insight into the residual and persistent dislike of Ardern. Dozens of them call Ardern “evil”, “dictator”, refer to her smile and public images, and the hatred, loathing, and despising of her - examples of which Dr Wilson referred to earlier when discussing the role of sexism.

The common grievances include her talk of ‘kindness’, alleged collusion with mainstream media, alleged suppression of free speech, lack of accountability, creation of a two-class society, creating family rifts, not being able to see dying loved ones, breaking public trust, and an annoyance at her now living overseas.

“She really destroyed lives,” says co-founder Alia Bland. “You've got people still living in caravans as a result of what she did. And so you can't move on from that unless there's some form of accountability, an apology, and serious measures taken to make sure that this can never happen again.”

Claire Deeks is the other co-founder and claims Ardern “destroyed the country, destroyed the economy, left this massive train wreck” and is now overseas having “a book tour and a recent documentary that won some award at Sundance because of all the amazing and good leadership and empathy and kindness”.

“So I think that's the answer to why there's still so much feeling,” says Deeks, before Bland expands on the ‘kindness’ angst.

“She told people she was being kind while she was taking away their livelihoods, their family relationships, their homes, their place in society, their ability to move freely, their ability to speak, and she dared to say that that was kind and empathetic, and she's still saying it now.”

Dr Duncan cautions an emphasis being placed on fringe groups for their role in Ardern’s demise, saying their impact is often overblown.

“There was a wider spread sense of discontent and you just had to talk to middle class New Zealanders - and they weren't necessarily out there protesting - but many of them were very angry about what was going on,” he says.

Conspiracies, the internet, global fame, and the need for someone to blame

Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford have endured some pretty wild rumours and conspiracy theories. Some media companies had to apologise for publishing them, while others had so persistently asked police about them, police had to issue a statement kiboshing them.

Over the course of Covid and even following her resignation, there have been even more bizarre theories, one of which was that she was a lizard person. Many more proliferated online.

Associate Professor of politics at Victoria University Lara Greaves says there’s certainly an element that the anti-Ardern community - especially those who were part of the 2022 Parliament occupation - became unified on the internet.

“One of the things that's been really hard over the Ardern era is the group that incredibly dislikes her, and the group people say have fallen prey to mis- or disinformation, they're down the rabbit hole, anti-vaxxers, whatever we want to call them.

“But that particular group of people has always existed in New Zealand politics,” she says. “People with those underlying vulnerabilities, those underlying issues, that underlying - what some people call misogyny, racism, whatever it is - those people target specific political actors based on their demographics and based on their politics,” Greaves says.

Shaw blames social media. “The other thing that we've got now that we didn't have then was this really toxic social media environment where you've got a decline in social consensus.

“That kind of toxicity towards her, in the same way that she was the personification of change in a time when people wanted change, she's also the personification of everything that a segment of society really hates and loathes. And it's kept alive through this horrendous technology that we've unleashed,” Shaw says.

Lynch puts it down to a general level of societal grumpiness. “Things are still pretty tough out there and people do like to find someone to blame.”

Greaves adds that Ardern’s global fame irks people: “There definitely has been this misalignment of the international view [compared] with how we perceive Ardern here. Maybe we were a bit tired of her at that point, or definitely the polls were coming down, but there definitely was that misalignment.”

Is the ‘hate’ overstated?

Campbell’s adamant that hate towards Ardern is just a vocal minority: “It's important that we don't allow one side to dominate.

“I would actually not accept what is sometimes taken as the dominant position that she's really disliked. There is a segment of the New Zealand community who don't agree and didn't agree with the decisions she made,” he says.

“But actually I think there are a large number of people who do. Increasingly over time, we'll see that the decisions she made, we should actually be really proud of them and they were good for New Zealand and they were good for our position in the world.”

Dr Duncan agrees, saying the hatred is “irrational and overstated”, while Dr Wilson says Ardern’s detractors will eventually move on: “A bunch of mostly anonymous people I see online are letting her live rent free in their heads even now. Quite why they remain committed to that when she's clearly gone on to do other things - I think a psychologist would be trying to counsel them and say ‘You might want to try and make some different life choices at this point, you know, she's gone.’”

Ardern’s legacy

Despite the rise and fall in popularity, Ardern’s tenure was packed with a remarkable series of crises to deal with. But there were also policies pushed through that are often forgotten including:

• Seven free-trade deals/upgrades

• Banning conversion therapy

• Matariki public holiday

• School lunches programme

• Medical cannabis

• Air Force fleet upgrades

• Doubling sick leave

• Extending paid parental leave

• Banning plastic bags, straws, and microbeads

• Re-entering Pike River

• 2,250 new classrooms

• Pay equity settlements

• Healthy home standards.

Conversely, there were policies which have been repealed including Three Waters, the Maori Health Authority, Fair Pay Agreements, and the ban on oil and gas exploration.

It’s usually up to history to describe a legacy, but two years after her resignation, I posed the question to those who agreed to be part of this series:

O’Riley: “I have roles that get me to different countries and her name often comes up in conversation because people in those countries can't understand why she isn't still our leader.

“But they didn't live in New Zealand and they didn't deal with the machinery that we had to deal with during Covid. So people will hopefully over time remember her as someone who had the right values set, but just didn't necessarily preside over a government that managed the crisis particularly well over the length of the crisis.”

Lynch: “Basically from March 15 onward, the country was in this lurching from a permanent state of crisis to crisis. And it must be hard to govern through that for anyone. No one will know who would have done things differently, but she certainly did it in a very memorable way.”

Dr Duncan: “In terms of substantial policy achievements, they have no legacy. They saw us through some disasters and through some emergencies, good on them, but they leave us with no policy achievements to say ‘That was the achievement of the Ardern Government’.”

Campbell: “No other leader had to make the volume of tough calls in response to external crises that she did. The sheer volume of consequential decisions both before and then during Covid I think is unprecedented.

“I felt we were lucky to have her for the period that we did and I wonder how New Zealand would have fared with someone else in that seat during those important decisions. I think she did it exceptionally, and I don't think anyone could have done it better.”

Deeks: “Division.”

Bland: “Definitely division - and in a whole range of areas too, it’s not just with Covid. We are living in a divided society now and people are not prepared to have these open discussions and listen to each other. That's the most disappointing thing.”

Dr Wilson: “Her crisis leadership approach around those three big crises really do stand up to international comparison incredibly well. It’s a style of crisis leadership that was bold and decisive but wrapped it in so much care for people that it held people together in really difficult circumstances, and I think a lot of people still remember that.”

Little: “It was an incredible time to be in government and I feel very proud to have served under Jacinda. The motivations were honorable, even if some of the decisions we took of the things that happened were challenging for people”.

Shaw: “I'm not saying that she's perfect […] but when you look back at those six years, it was a brief, shining moment in our history where there was hope that things could be different.”

Greaves: “Rewriting some of those rule books around how you react when there's a terrorist attack, how you react when there's like a pandemic, that's definitely part of it. She won't be able to get away from that - and of course having a baby in office which for some demographics means so much.”

Those who declined or didn’t respond to be part of this series: Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins, Megan Woods, Stuart Nash, Winston Peters, Christopher Luxon, Simon Bridges, Judith Collins, Ashley Bloomfield, Helen Clark, and Imam Gamal Fouda.

You can read part one of Lloyd Burr’s series here, part two here, part three here, and part four here.