We finally saw the first leaders’ debate on Tuesday night and boy was it a real doozy.

 It was very telling in many ways, but the overriding impression, for me,  was that it was a battle of slogans against substance.

Jacinda Ardern came to the battle ill-prepared and schooled up with a kitbag of slogans and a strategy of presenting a small target. 

She looked grumpy and ill at ease, it was almost like she’d been told her partner had been caught playing away, such was her demeanour.

That aside, it is, of course, easy to present a small target when your list of achievements in government can be written on the back of a postage stamp…that’s if you could, in fact, find such a thing. 

Postage stamps being a thing of the past like Ardern thinks farming is.

The sloganeering from the Prime Minister failed.