Former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern: ‘I could only run my country by being myself’

In 2018, aged just 37, Jacinda Ardern made history by becoming the youngest female leader in the world.

Not only that, but six days before landing the job as New Zealand’s next prime minister, she also discovered that she was pregnant.

Both events came as a surprise.

She had halted her IVF treatment after her boss quit as head of the Labour Party, just weeks before a general election, nominating her as his successor.

As his deputy, ‘I didn’t want him to resign out of purely personal reasons,’ she recalls, ‘out of fear that all of this would land on me’. Despite ‘waves of incredible anxiety’ and a lifelong battle with imposter syndrome that always made her feel ‘that I wasn’t good enough’, Ardern stepped up to the plate.

Armed with the slogan ‘let’s do this!’ she felt the fear and did it anyway, and her unvarnished authenticity instantly connected with voters.

‘There was no time for polls and focus groups about how to present yourself in a particular way if you’re going to win an election,’ she explains.

‘That meant I could only be myself.’

Today her leadership agenda, based on kindness, empathy, compassion and A Different Kind Of Power (the title of her recent memoir), has won her famous fans from Oprah to Prince William, who appointed her trustee of his Earthshot project.

Yet the Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern remains delightfully down to earth.

Arriving early at Soho Hotel for our interview, I spot her across the hotel lobby, camouflaged in typical 40-something garb of clumpy shoes, wide-legged trousers and a practical backpack (all black), clutching a coat hanger with her own outfit for tonight’s glitzy movie premiere.

That movie is Prime Minister, an intimate, breast-pumps-and-all documentary about her premiership (2017-23). Produced by her husband, TV presenter Clarke Gayford, it sets out to rehumanise politics and to show ‘what it’s really like to lead’.

No spoilers, but it turns out that leading a country – particularly through a pandemic – is no picnic. Especially if you’re a woman.

‘Politics is a hard place to be right now,’ Ardern says, when we meet up to talk in her hotel room.

‘It’s probably almost harder now than when I [resigned as PM] two years ago. Politicians are human too. We give all that we can for as long as we can and then it’s time to go.’

She cites the increasing ‘globalisation of political culture’. Where ‘fear and blame’ are being weaponised. And an ‘increase in political grievance where people think hostile acts like spreading disinformation or vandalism of public spaces are justified’ because they feel like their governments aren’t serving them.

As she says in the film: ‘It’s hard not to switch on the news some days and just think the world is a dumpster fire. We are on a precipice, but I am an optimist at heart. How do we shine a light on the humanity that I know is still there? That’s what keeps me going.’

She prefers not to highlight the hideous abuse she personally endured, both online and in person.

Championed for her swift, first response to the Covid pandemic, she was subsequently barricaded into parliament by a rabble of far-right anti-vax protesters, yelling at her until her ears rang and waving nooses and swastikas at her day and night.

Eight people have been prosecuted for threatening to kill her. Yet for all the ugliness that left her with ‘no longer enough in the tank’ to carry on (to quote her resignation speech), ‘I would still encourage people to go into politics.

Day to day there were plenty of joyful moments.’

However, don’t confuse her optimism for naivety – it comes from experience. ‘In a crisis you see the worst, but also the best of people.’

That was certainly the case with the Christchurch massacre of 2019. The worst terrorist attack in New Zealand’s history, it saw 51 people shot dead at two mosques. Ardern knows she ‘will never get over it’.

The documentary puts us in her shoes in a very human way, revealing how she privately struggled with the best way to respond to that crisis as well as the avalanche of other choices and decisions that leadership demanded.

And that’s even before you factor in juggling a newborn baby. Jacinda is only the second elected world leader in history to give birth while in office – the first being Pakistan’s prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990.

In a neat tribute, Ardern’s daughter, Neve, was born on Bhutto’s birthday and has made history in her own right as the first baby to ever attend the UN general assembly.

‘I really didn’t think about the magnitude of that moment,’ Ardern saysof the photos of her and Neve making global news. ‘As with most things, it was simply logistics. Neve was four months old and I was breastfeeding. But I will say the intensity of working and parenting means your logistics really step up a notch.’ A pragmatist to her core, logistics appear to be her happy place. ‘I’m a bit of a planner’ she smiles – and she smiles that enormous smile a lot.

‘I still have this weird thing where I get my clothes ready for the next day the night before. It’s like if I can remove one decision for tomorrow, I’ll do that.’ That’s one hack we can all easily adopt. But can working mums really ‘have it all’?

‘I would say the answer is yes,’ declares the 45-year-old, waving aside help to pour the tea that’s just arrived. ‘Don’t worry, I can multitask,’ she (rather unnecessarily) assures me.

However, she’s quick not to be held up as a Wonder Woman. ‘It wasn’t like I was ever single-handedly running a country and then singularly raising a child,’ she explains. ‘Clarke [who became a stay-at-home father] and I have always been a team and I had my mother, my mother-in-law and Neve’s godmothers. We shouldn’t create an idea that “having it all” means doing it all yourself.’

So, now she’s out of all that and rumoured to be in the running for the UN’s top post of secretary-general, has the imposter syndrome finally vanished? ‘No!’ she smiles. ‘But the trick is not treating it as a weakness or a toxic trait. Manage it and it actually drives you to prepare, to research, talk to experts. Those aren’t bad things. The only bad thing is when you let it stop you from taking on an opportunity.’ In an era dominated by ‘rage bait’ and ‘strong men’ leaders, she concludes, ‘perhaps a little more imposter syndrome is just what we need in the world. A bit more humility wouldn’t go astray.’

Prime Minister is released in selected UK and Irish cinemas tomorrow.