Jacinda Ardern is hugely popular overseas and has long enjoyed record high approval ratings in New Zealand. His party and personal popularity ratings have recently fallen in the polls as the economy worsens.
“I just don’t have enough energy anymore.” It is in simple words but completely unknown in the political world that Jacinda Ardern, 42, Prime Minister of New Zealand since 2017, announced her resignation on Thursday, surprising her country. She will leave office on February 7, nine months before the general election, which she will therefore not be leading.
“I’m human. We give as much as we can and as long as we can, and then it’s time. And for me, that moment has come,” she told her Labor comrades. “These five and a half years have been the most fulfilling of my life “But there have also been challenges. I know what this job demands and I know I don’t have enough energy left to do it justice. It’s as simple as that,” she added, announcing her retirement.
Jacinda Ardern led a coalition government in 2017 at the age of 37, becoming the country’s youngest woman prime minister since 1856. She then led the centre-left Labor Party to a landslide victory in the next general election, three years later. During her tenure, she faced the Covid-19 pandemic, a deadly volcanic eruption and the country’s worst-ever attack, the 2019 killing of 51 Muslim worshipers at a Christchurch mosque by a white supremacist.
She is the second prime minister in the world, after Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, to have given birth to a child while in office. And she caused a stir when she brought her three-month-old daughter Neve to the United Nations platform in September 2018. “I want to normalize that,” she argued. By being more open, it could create a path for other women.”
Hugely popular overseas, where she has graced the covers of Vogue and Time magazines, she has long enjoyed record ratings in New Zealand, where the media sometimes even referred to it as ‘Jacindamania’. After winning a second term thanks to Labor’s landslide victory in the 2020 general election, Ardern has seen his popularity fall in recent years for a number of reasons: deteriorating economic conditions, loss of confidence in his government, resurgence of the Conservative opposition.
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And the stress she has experienced over the last few years has made her falter at times. In December, after a heated argument with opposition leader David Seymour, his murmurs were caught by his microphone, always on: “What an arrogant asshole!” She’d made up for it with a healthy dose of self-mockery by auctioning off the parliamentary report containing the insult to raise funds for the fight against cancer.
Jacinda Ardern was born in Hamilton, 130 km south of Auckland, in 1980 and says it was the poverty she saw in the North Island hinterland that helped shape her leftist beliefs. The daughter of a police officer, she was raised in the Mormon faith, which she abandoned in the 2000s due to that church’s positions on homosexuality.
Thanks to an aunt, she was interested in politics at an early age and joined the working-class youth organizations. After her studies she worked for Prime Minister Helen Clark, then in London for Tony Blair. “Everyone knows I just accepted the worst political job without notice,” she declared as she became the youngest leader in the Labor Party’s 100-year history.
She didn’t think too well of saying: Barely a year and a half after taking office as Prime Minister, her country was hit by a terrorist attack. A white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, killing 51 people and injuring 40. Ardern’s response was celebrated around the world for her sensitivity, particularly when she wore a headscarf while offering her condolences to Muslim families.
She was also praised for her strong political actions, including gun restrictions, and for her efforts to force social media giants to crack down on hate speech online. Its health policy against the coronavirus, which prompted it to close the archipelago’s borders, was also well appreciated by New Zealanders.