New Zealand National party leader yearns for the star treatment

In the election Judith Collins is up against one of the most popular PMs in recent times

I've been having an awfully fun time, can you tell?", Judith Collins, the leader of New Zealand's centre-right National party enthused, to a campaign trail meeting packed with her admirers outside the South Island city of Dunedin. I can't stop grinning."

It was true; she could not. Collins, the country's opposition leader, is running in the 17 October election against one of the country's most popular prime ministers of recent times, Jacinda Ardern, who is mobbed for selfies wherever she goes - with such large and closely-packed crowds that security and Covid-19 precautions often appear to be cast aside.