It seems a pity that the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey nabbed the title, Why I Care, for his recent memoir, because it would have been just the thing for Jacinda Ardern’s, which is about this very subject. Instead she makes do with A Different Kind of Power — and how different hers is can be judged from the dedication, to “the criers, worriers and huggers”.
She is indeed a hugger. Her most famous moment was when she hugged victims of the anti-Muslim Christchurch attack, and she started hugging as a young teenager when she visited two girls whose brother had killed himself. It’s absolutely fine to be expressive in your sympathies, so long as you don’t think this is the sole marker of authenticity, but you get the impression there’s not an awful lot more to Ardern’s politics.
Her lockdown policy as PM was extreme and controversial but the thing about the huggers is that they are so convinced of their compassion that they think anyone who takes a contrary view must necessarily be malicious and possibly a Trump supporter, and so we find.
She first took a stand on public affairs as a girl when she saw a cartoon in which a beastly conservative finance minister was standing with a soup ladle and a cauldron in front of a queue of children … except instead of giving them soup, she was taking it away! Of such influences are Jacindas made.
But to be fair, her father was a police officer in a tough-nut town where he had a rough deal from the criminal classes but tried to resolve conflicts through talk. That was an abiding influence. The other was the Mormon church in which she grew up, which was very keen on good works; alas she lost her faith.
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The memoir starts interestingly, with Ardern on the loo. We think she’s awaiting the outcome of the tense coalition negotiations but no, it’s the result of a pregnancy test! And I don’t need to tell you how that worked out.
There is one gem. When Ardern meets the late Queen she asks her about raising children. “You just get on with it,” said the monarch. It was a dialogue between different worlds.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist and writer at The London Standard
A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern is out now (Macmillan, £25)
