They may not be saviours, but they are better than the alternative

 Kate Maltby had a pop at Jacinda Ardern, Justin Trudeau and Luis da Silva in the Independent the other week. About the Brazilian president-elect, she wrote:

You may, like me, have seen your social media pages flood this week with declarations of joy at Lula’s ascent. Lefty friends of mine changed their profile pictures to warm-filtered images of the former trade-unionist, hands raised in victory. How many of them, I wondered, could provide a basic summary of the Bolsa Família programme, cornerstone of Lula’s economic platform when he last led the nation between 2003 and 2011.The Bolsa Família was one of the largest cash transfers from rich to poor in the world – but crucially, it was also conditional. Under Lula, poor families received unprecedented financial support, but only if their children were kept in school and the parents proved themselves functional members of society. Lula’s supporters still claim that the Bolsa Família programme had a transformative effect on truancy rates and workplace productivity.

But what did Bolsonaro or his conservative predecessors do for those children? And would Lula have been able to push his Familia programme through parliament without those checks?

Maltby is justified in criticising Lula for swallowing the Kremlin line about the Ukraine invasion. However, he is not the only man of the left not to realise that Putin gave up all pretence to be a socialist long ago and that his United Russia party has all the trappings of fascism. Corbyn is not the only Putin apologist in the UK. 

She describes Ardern and Trudeau as failures. I had my doubts about the Liberal leader, his willingness to go along with the US world view and especially being linked to a political scandal. However, he must have done more right than wrong in the eyes of the Canadian electorate, because the Liberals have been returned to power three times since defeating the Conservatives in 2011. Jacinda Ardern's Labour party had an even more convincing endorsement in 2020, turning a minority into a majority government. New Zealand was grateful for the lead she took in resisting the advance of Covid-19 in the country. If only more governments in the world had acted as quickly and decisively!