I’m a proud dual citizen of New Zealand and the UK, but I will not forgive or forget the damage Ardern has caused, says Dan Wootton

The first Covid authoritarian has fallen.

And good riddance it is too to Jacinda Ardern.

A China-loving politician who tried to present herself to the world as the epitome of Be Kind, even during her weepy resignation speech.

When her response to the pandemic was anything but compassionate.

In fact, it was downright dystopian, nasty and heartless, as she brainwashed her fellow woke disciples – thanks to a compliant media, obsessed with her celebrity status – into embracing a Zero Covid prison island while illegally locking out a million citizens trapped overseas, no matter how tragic the circumstances, and demonising the unvaccinated.

Contrast how she wants to present herself as she quit this morning compared to the way she governed…

She was crying, by the way, because this wasn’t her choice.

Ardern was facing a brutal and historic election defeat that would have destroyed her status as a globalist darling.

Kiwis are rightly fed up with the economic catastrophe that came from 24-day Covid isolation periods, shocking crimewaves and immense division that she has inflicted on my beloved birth country.

Yes, the end of Ardern’s regime is deeply personal to me.

I refer to the two-faced politician, only half mockingly, as the Dear Leader Who Must Not Be Criticised.

Because when I did call out her in this game changing column in the MailOnline,

I was even attacked by New Zealand’s Speaker of the House, the Ardern ally Trevor Mallard. By the way, a few months later he was forced out of his job because of inhumane treatment towards anti-Ardern protestors at parliament, who he had pelted with the sprinkler system.

Even though I was branded a traitor, I have no regrets for speaking out about the horror of Ardern’s Covid policy, which included a demonic lottery where passport holders had to apply online to see whether they would be allowed to return home.

It helped turn the tide in waking New Zealanders up to the fact what she was doing was not normal.

So too did the incredible Charlotte Bellis, a brave New Zealand journalist who had to seek haven from the Taliban in Afghanistan because she was initially banned from returning to her home country to give birth…

It was only being shamed in the international media that prompted Ardern to start making changes.

Remember, she’d locked the country down for one Covid case and hadn’t changed the insane strategy even when the world realised Omicron was just a cold.

Thousands of folk, completely unnecessarily, missed being with loved ones as they died from non-Covid illnesses while locked up in Ardern’s Covid prisons, some of which didn’t even meet the standards of the United Nations Convention on the Crimes Against Torture.

New Zealand is only just starting to recover from this madness.

I was back earlier this month – businesses are decimated. One company I know broke out in applause when her decision was announced yesterday.

And society is starkly divided too.

The unvaccinated remain rightly shellshocked that they lost jobs as paramedics, pharmacists, police officers and even vets simply for exercising their right to bodily autonomy.

I do love my birth country. I’m a proud dual citizen of New Zealand and the UK.

But I will not forgive or forget the damage Ardern has caused.

I hope and pray New Zealand is able to re-embrace important values like freedom of the press, tolerance for bodily autonomy and the right to always return home now the Be Kind tyrant is gone.