Larry Williams Drive

Judith Collins has two weeks left as an MP and she’s given an exit interview to Audrey Young at the New Zealand Herald in which she says people don’t like strong women - obviously referring to herself. Now, I don’t disagree with Judith that she is a strong woman. She’s formidable. But I do disagree with her that people don’t like strong women, because what is Helen Clark if not a strong woman? So strong, they used to say that the softest part of her was her teeth - and yet she was elected and re-elected by the New Zealand public three times. That’s more than Jacinda Ardern achieved and Jacinda Ardern is not what I would call a strong woman. Now, look, I realise there are too many variables to ever make a truly fair comparison across elections like that. But if you did strip everything else out, you’d look at it like this: Helen, the strong woman, won three elections, compared with Jacinda - the milder personality - who won two and only really won the second because of COVID. Judith Collins doesn’t explicitly