Goblin's choice

Many politicians triumphed against the odds in a year when kindness became passé. Here's a list of the winners.

- JANE CLIFTON

Freed from “team of fi ve million” pandemic strictures, our politics went full tilt into goblin mode for 2022.

As the Oxford Dictionary’s zeitgeist term of the year, “goblin mode” now signifies the opposite of lockdown spirit: selfishness and boorishness. It’s the unruly-tourist ethos gone global, with added butt crack.

Like other countries, we had our goblin-mode antivaccine-mandate protests. But this country was especially original in marshalling high goblinism against a proposal to better protect people against campylobacter, typhoid and other water- and sewage-borne death threats. Three Waters was reimagined as a Māori and eco-warrior conspiracy theory by daringly creative goblinism.

The most courtly of politicians succumbed. National Party leader Christopher Luxon inadvertently called low-income people “bottom feeders”, and by December, even Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was leaving her “kindness” kit at home, calling Act’s David Seymour “an arrogant prick”. To be fair, he looked thrilled.

Goblinism is not immune to a few gongs, however. Many politicians triumphed against the odds this year.

The Living Well Is the Best Revenge Exemplar: Simon Bridges. The tanked opposition leader became Auckland Business Chamber chief, a popular memoirist and podcaster and a shortlister for chair of the will-they-or-won’t they merger of TVNZ and RNZ. This nomination alone is relishable utu, discomforting both the government and Bridges’ ungrateful National colleagues.