Jacinda Ardern became a lightning rod for threats during the pandemic years, but has it changed New Zealand’s relatively civil political landscape forever?
Jacinda Ardern sat at a plastic table, laughing and chatting with primary school students as they unpacked their lunchboxes. “What’re your favourite lunches?” she asked the group, as they chewed through sliced quarters of orange.
It was a routine, bread-and-butter visit for the then-prime minister in February last year, checking on the progress of a government lunch program at a small school outside Christchurch. That afternoon, however, it quickly turned ugly.
