Jacinda Ardern saves best for last in New Zealand election TV debate | Steve Braunias

Judith Collins has the look of a defeated woman as Labour heads to likely victory

Long time no see. Jacinda Ardern left it late, but turned up at last night's fourth and final debate of the election campaign as the prime minister. Ghostly versions of herself made weird, kind of shifty appearances in the previous three debates. God she was terrible, an anxious mess, uptight, easily thrown, unable to say anything memorable or with much conviction. She got better or at least less terrible as the debates dragged on and last night, back at the TVNZ studios where the series began, she was in the ascendant. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She looked like herself.

Who was the person sitting beside her in the mauve lights of the studio, though? Someone who only had a faint resemblance to the National leader, Judith Collins, someone who looked like she had the fight taken out of her and had nothing left to give. God, it was sad to witness. It's a lie that it's lonely at the top. It's a lot lonelier at the bottom, and that's where Collins seems right now at the end of a campaign that has turned into a nightmare, with the prospect of a sound thrashing on Saturday.