Originally Posted by
iceman
Interesting take on the hype from John Armstrong : "prevailing wisdom" is that Ardern will win back all those former Labour voters, but there is little evidence as yet to make such an assumption. You could have been excused for thinking Labour had just won the general election, rather than indulging in a last-minute exercise in survival. Amidst such euphoria, it is easy to forget the scale of the leap required to bridge the gap between leader and deputy leader.
In her prior capacity as deputy, Ardern had run up all of four months' experience in a senior management position in the party. She has never stamped a particular personal vision on the policies that have emerged from the shadow portfolios she has held during her nine years as an MP. Neither has she shown that she possesses the finely-tuned political instincts of a John Key, a Richard Prebble or, crucially in her case, a Bill English.
Perhaps most important of all, she has never landed a sustained hit which really rattled Labour's old foe."