Any hopes that we might be getting a break, at least for a while, from Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s former prime minister, have been dashed. She’s found a new platform (many more will doubtless follow), this one provided by the slightly less annoying of King Prince Charles’s two sons.
Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill:
Jacinda Ardern has been sworn into the highest political caste. She takes her place alongside the likes of John Kerry and Mark Carney as a member of the globe-trotting eco-elite. She’s been admitted to that inner circle of eco-globalists who spend their days wringing their hands over the climate apocalypse and wagging their fingers at the polluting throng.
No sooner had she bid a tearful farewell to the New Zealand parliament this week — four months after officially resigning as prime minister — than it was announced she would be joining the board of the Earthshot Prize, Prince William’s global green crusade. Anyone who thought Ardern’s ducking-out of NZ’s top job would give us a break from her smiley authoritarianism is in for a rude awakening. It’s not just the good people of New Zealand who will now have to endure the paternalist Ardern style, that oppressive hectoring always delivered with a toothy beam and caring liberal head-tilt — it’s all of us.
Ardern will bring ‘a rich infusion of new thinking to our mission’, said Prince William yesterday. She might not have had ‘enough in the tank’ to keep leading New Zealand, but it seems she’s got enough to strut the world with the other climate crusaders.
“Our mission.”
Prince William might want to remember what his mission is meant to be. He’s now the Prince of Wales, the heir to the British throne. His role is to be a symbol, a “living flag,” and that’s it. But just as was the case with his father (and may still be — we’ll see) he has confused the importance of his role with his importance as a person. His role is important, but he is not. Under the conventions of the U.K.’s (vagueish) constitution, he is supposed to keep clear of activities that could be construed as political.
And whether he likes it or not, green activism is profoundly political, as adding Ardern to his “mission” reminds us.