Jacinda Ardern has resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand. After a period of reflection over the summer break, she concluded that she no longer had ‘enough left in the tank’ to do the job justice.

Fakery wasn’t the problem with Ardern. Sincerity was

Cynics claim she is jumping ship before the electoral defeat that opinion polls suggest she and her Labour party will suffer in October’s general election. That’s an unkind thing to say. It must disappoint Ardern that, after almost six years at the helm, New Zealand still contains such unpleasant people. If there is one thing that Ardern is all about, and to which she has dedicated herself as Prime Minister, it’s kindness.

As she put it in her resignation announcement, ‘I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused’.

Not everyone who indulges in moral self-congratulation is insincere. I suspect Ardern means what she says. During my brief and unsuccessful stint as leader of the ACT Party of New Zealand in 2014, I met her a few times. She was likable. Five years later, she responded to the massacre at two Christchurch mosques with great empathy and warmth.

Fakery wasn’t the problem with Ardern. Sincerity was. Politicians who genuinely believe themselves to be guided by superior moral vision are naturally inclined to authoritarianism.

One reason is that even the richest politicians, the likes of Trump and Sunak, have not nearly enough money to dispense their own kindness. They must force others to. Politicians have nothing to give but the gift of coercion. And the kinder they are, the more they coerce.

Government spending under Ardern rose from 36 per cent of GDP to 43 per cent. Those on the receiving end of the spending, such as the 55,000 new government employees, are surely happy about that. But those from whom the money is extracted are surely not. Being kind to government employees requires Ardern to be unkind to taxpayers.

Or consider criminals, to whom Ardern has been kind. Her government has a target for reducing the prison population by 30 per cent, regardless of the crime rate (which is rising sharply after a long-term decline). That’s nice for criminals. But not so nice for their victims.

When you have nothing of your own to give, it’s harder to be kind than politicians such as Ardern would have us believe. And in the attempt, they mess up incentives. Why study, work or invest when kind politicians will imprison you if you do not hand over your gains to those who have not? When resigning, Ardern said she was proud of reducing the number of children in poverty. That’s nice. But the welfarism that achieves this result also makes children conclude that they have little to gain by studying. Forty per cent of children, mainly from poor families, no longer attend school regularly.

The other reason the self-assumed morally superior are inclined to authoritarianism is their unavoidably dim view of those who disagree with them. If Ardern is kind, those who disagree with her are unkind. Why should the unkind be allowed to peddle their hateful ideas?

Ardern responded to the Covid pandemic by closing the country’s borders and confining New Zealanders to their homes. Some people did not take her view of the threat posed by the virus and the best way of dealing with it. This was frustrating for a wise leader doing no more than being kind. At one of her weekly press conferences in March 2020, she told the population that they should believe nothing about Covid unless they heard it from her or her officials, that they were ‘the single source of truth’.

This recommendation was not backed by legal force. But Ardern did seek to legally limit what New Zealanders may say. Her government has introduced a Bill to parliament that will extend the scope of hate speech laws, potentially making it illegal to say nasty things about religious people. And Ardern campaigns internationally to encourage governments to control social media companies’ content moderation policies.

‘How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?’ Ardern asked the UN General Assembly in September 2022. ‘How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?’ All these dreadful people saying dreadful things that get in the way of Ardern and her ilk spreading their kindness.

With the exception of liberalising New Zealand’s restrictive home-building regulations, Ardern’s government has only damaged New Zealand. Perhaps the most profound mistake has been adopting the view that the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which recognised Maori ownership of their land and granted them ‘all the rights and privileges of British subjects’, made the governance of New Zealand a partnership between Maori and the Crown. Not only is this interpretation contrary to the text of the treaty but it violates the principle that all citizens have the same legal rights and eligibility for political participation, regardless of their parentage.

My only hope is that Ardern will have taught New Zealanders an important lesson. Beware politicians peddling their virtue, especially when they have big smiles.