October 7, 2023

Jacinda Ardern appeared on stage at The Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York last month

BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES

, Perth

Saturday October 07 2023, 6.00pm BST, The Sunday Times

‘Flash flooding in New York wasn’t going to stop us getting our vote in for the New Zealand election," Jacinda Ardern, the former Labour prime minister, told her 1.6 million followers on Instagram.

The 43-year-old, who quit suddenly in January, gave a quick shoutout to her old friend and successor Chris "Chippy" Hipkins, before signing off with a plea to the 700,000 other Kiwis abroad to follow her lead.

"Iconic behaviour," gushed Shaneel Lal, a New Zealand LGBT activist.

Not everyone was so impressed.

"Disappointing to say the least you ditched the country after leaving it in the state it’s in," another follower grumbled.

A couple of days before braving the sodden streets of New York last weekend to do their democratic duty, Ardern andher fiancé, Clarke Gayford, had been mingling at George and Amal Clooney’s second charitable Albie Awards at the New York Public Library. It was the hottest ticket in town, with a parade of Hollywood stars including Meryl Streep, Matt Damon and Daniel Craig attending alongside Melinda Gates and Hillary Clinton.

It is not uncommon for former heads of government to step well away from the cut and thrust of politics.

Ardern and her partner, Clarke Gayford, with their daughter, Neve

DEREK HENDERSON/GETTY IMAGES

And Ardern, who declared she no longer had enough left in the tank to do the job justice when she stepped down, has been conspicuously absent during New Zealand’s election campaign.

While the latest polls suggest Hipkins’s Labour government will be crushed next weekend by the most right-wing coalition in years, Ardern has been burying herself in the books at Harvard University, and treating herself to the odd night out on the town.

The former leader, who was made a Dame in June, moved to Boston last month for Harvard’s "fall" semester, accompanied by Gayford and their five-year-old daughter, Neve.

Ardern has been awarded three fellowships, one of which involves studying how to contain extremist content online. This enables her to continue the work of the global Christchurch Call initiative she began after the mosque terrorist attacks in March 2019, in which 51 people were killed and which were livestreamed on Facebook.

Attending a national moment of silence after the Christchurch attacks in 2019

ALAMY

She has also been working on a memoir focusing on inspiring other "reluctant leaders" such as herself, and recently chaired a panel discussion in New York in her role as a trustee of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, set up to fund environmental projects.

All this conveniently puts her more than 9,000 miles from home as New Zealand lurches to the right. And in a very different world from the Auckland hotel room in which her beleaguered ally Hipkins was holed up for most of last week after testing positive for Covid, the day before early voting opened on Monday.

Perhaps aware that her presence might be a distraction, Arderndeclared in April that she would "helpfully" be at Harvard during the election campaign.

Richard Shaw, a professor of politics at New Zealand’s Massey University, suggested there was nothing accidental about her absence from the campaign.

"Labour is about to get a caning, but it would have been even more of a calamity if Ardern had got involved," he said. "She has gone from being a unifying figure to being a divisive one, so has taken herself out of the picture to give Hipkins a clear run."

The charismatic former prime minister was seen as a global champion for the progressive left and was feted by fellow world leaders including President Biden and President Macron.

With the Norwegian prime minister at the Global Progress Action Summit in Montreal last month

MINAS PANAGIOTAKIS/GETTY IMAGES

Three years ago she won a landslide election victory, securing a second term with an outright majority — a rare feat in the country’s mixed member proportional representation system.

Her popularity, which peaked during the Covid pandemic when she quickly shut the country’s borders, waned as households became more preoccupied with rising inflation and crime.

Ardern, alongside Hipkins, her former Covid-19 response minister, was criticised for clinging on to pandemic restrictions for too long, and locking many expat New Zealanders out of the country.

Now she is regarded by many as a liability for a Labour government scrambling to reclaim the centre ground and win back alienated voters.

Ardern on election night in October 2020

DAVID ROWLAND/REUTERS

Since taking the reins, Hipkins has tried to distance himself from his old friend and boss, ditching some of her more progressive or contentious policies, which included plans for a new wealth tax. Instead, he has promised to focus on "bread and butter" problems such as tackling high inflation, rising crime and building more affordable housing.

Asked on the morning chat show AM recently whether he had received any "hot tips" from Ardern, Hipkins stressed he had not spoken to his "good friend" much since he became prime minister, and not at all over the past few weeks.

But his efforts to break from the previous regime appear to have been in vain, with latest polls suggesting Labour is on course to win just 26 per cent of the vote.

If correct this would mean its popularity has roughly halved in three years, amounting to one of the biggest swings against a governing party experienced in New Zealand.

The opposition centre-right National party, led by Christopher Luxon, a former Air New Zealand boss, looks virtually certain to form a coalition government with the libertarian, right-wing ACT party.

But, if the latest polls are correct, he will have to join forces with the more right-wing, populist New Zealand First party in order to secure a majority.

This would pose a headache for Luxon, because New Zealand First is staunchly opposed to his flagship $14 billion tax cut package, describing it as unaffordable for a country mired in recession and debt.

Christopher Luxon, leader of the New Zealand National Party, with his wife, Amanda

DAVID ROWLAND/REUTERS

Both the ACT and New Zealand First are focused on reducing immigration and stamping out "racist" policies introduced by Ardern’s government that they say unfairly prioritise Maori and Pacific islanders.

This must surely be a galling prospect for Ardern, who once described the outspoken ACT leader David Seymour as an "arrogant prick" in parliament when she thought her microphone was switched off.

But it is her successor who has been left carrying the can.