Good morning. The prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, shocked the world yesterday when she announced her resignation. Her reasoning was simple: “For me, it’s time. I just don’t have enough in the tank for another four years.” A perfectly reasonable explanation when your job has been leading a country of over five million people for over half a decade, with little to no real break, during an unprecedented pandemic. And, of course, she gave birth to her first child months after taking office.
In 2017, she became the world’s youngest female head of government, at 37 years old, making big promises about the changes that she would strive to make. Since that moment, Ardern developed a reputation as a leader capable of weathering crisis after crisis, centring empathy, humanity and compassion in her policies and decision-making. From her response to the Christchurch massacre, in which 51 Muslim New Zealanders died, to dealing with the White Island eruption less than a year later, and shepherding the country through Covid, Ardern will be hard to follow.
Nonetheless, her legacy is mixed. As the country deals with a deepening housing crisis, rising interest rates and a significant child poverty problem, Ardern leaves her party with a significant uphill battle for the October general election. I spoke to Tess McClure, the Guardian’s Aotearoa New Zealand correspondent, about what happens next. That’s right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Social policy | Census data for England and Wales has revealed there are five million people – including children as young as five – who act as unpaid carers. The news comes as the social care system continues to buckle under the pressure of rising unmet care demand.
Education | Headteachers are calling for a radical transformation of the way Ofsted inspects and rates schools. They say the measures of school performance are “woefully blunt” and fail to reflect the significantly varied and different circumstances in which schools operate.
Environment | The long awaited plastic bottle deposit return scheme is set to launch in England today, five years after it was initially promised by Michael Gove. The decision to not include glass in the scheme has been criticised by campaigners as a missed opportunity.
Politics | Analysis by the Guardian has found that Tory seats have been given significantly more money from the government’s £4bn levelling up fund than other areas with similar levels of deprivation. Some council leaders have accused Rishi Sunak of offering “pre election bribes”.
David Crosby | Singer, guitarist and songwriter David Crosby has died aged 81, after a “long illness”. The US musician was part of the original lineup of the Byrds and appeared on their first five albums. He went on to co-found the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash.
In depth: ‘She was still the best hope for Labour – it’s going to be very challenging for them now’
When Ardern became prime minister, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro were two of the biggest figures on the international stage. She was a “strong counterweight”, Tess says. Her ability to appear human, and crucially normal, made international headlines and sometimes history. With only two weeks left in office, New Zealand, and the rest of the world too, is anticipating the next political era for this small island country.
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Five years later: where is New Zealand now
When it comes to certain metrics, like GDP and unemployment, New Zealand is doing well. However, as the cost of food, energy, gas, mortgages and rent continue to rise, many are left struggling, particularly the poorest in the country. But that predicament should be placed within the context of a global economic downturn. “The effects of the war in Ukraine, high inflation rates and the ongoing pressures on international supply chains are affecting New Zealand, factors that are not dictated by the government of the day,” Tess says.
The other big economic force is the reserve bank, Tess points out, which has been “very bullish on interest rates”, pushing up mortgage repayments for homeowners and “exacerbating the problem in an already highly unaffordable market”.
And housing has been an ongoing problem for years. In 2018, the government laid out an ambitious plan to build 100,000 new homes over the next decade to help ease prices. They scrapped the target in 2019 when only 47 homes had been constructed in six months. New Zealand’s are the sixth most expensive houses in the world relative to incomes. “Large numbers of people have been pushed into sleeping in cars, in insecure housing or hotels,” Tess says. And this problem shows no sign of abetting.
Even on issues like the climate crisis, change has been slow and incremental. Crucially, there has not been a decline in New Zealand’s emissions. “I think New Zealanders have genuinely recognised some of the same attributes in Ardern that the international community has seen, particularly in those incredibly high intensity moments,” Tess says. “But there’s also been a degree of disillusionment because they’ve not seen the progress that people had hoped for on some of those core issues.”
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What her resignation means for her party
At the end of last year, polling was released that showed that support for the Labour party had dropped to its lowest level since 2017, at 33%. Had an election been called then, Ardern would not have been able to form a coalition government with the Greens and the Māori party. Her “almost stratospheric popularity”, that hit its peak during the early days of the pandemic when there was huge national support for the Covid response, has seen a marked decline, says Tess. And yet, Ardern still has strong personal approval ratings and a loyal following. “She was still the most popular possibility for a leader in New Zealand and in that sense, was the best hope for the Labour party to win any election,” says Tess. “It’s going to be very challenging for them now.”
The other problem is the lack of a clear successor. The obvious replacement, longtime deputy prime minister Grant Robertson, has already ruled himself out, reiterating his commitment to his current role as minister of finance. There are some other potential candidates, but the party does not have long to figure out who is the best person to take the top job and lead them through an election campaign, as Ardern has said that she will be gone by 7 February.
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The opposition
If things keep going the way they are, it looks like there will be a centre right coalition coming into power after the October general election. The centre-right National party is polling at 38%, while the libertarian Act party is at 11%. That should be more than enough to form a rightwing coalition. For years, the opposition was characterised by infighting, leadership troubles and terrible polling, but its new leader, Christopher Luxon, an evangelical Christian and former airline boss, has spent the last year rebranding his party and it’s clearly paying off. Even though Luxon’s policy positions are vague and he has found himself out of step with the average New Zealander on issues like abortion, his party is doing better than it has for a very long time.
There are still nine months before that election is due. A lot can change once a new leader is in place. But foremost among their challenge will be stepping out of the shadow of a prime minister who became a significant international figure, ensuring New Zealand’s politics had a global prominence that once would have been unimaginable.
What else we’ve been reading
Dining across the divide is a constant delight: in the latest we find out what happens when you pair a Tory voter who owns a dog called Thatcher with a non-binary, queer immigrant from Hungary. Both agreed Labour will win the next election, so that’s something. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
Libby Brooks’ piece into the Tavistock’s NHS gender identity clinic is sensitively handled and exhaustive, telling the 33-year story of this pioneering and contentious facility that now faces closure. Nimo
The Bafta nominations are out – and criminally Top Gun Maverick isn’t dominating the list. Peter Bradshaw takes us through the runners and riders, and looks at the emergence of Netflix’s German language All Quiet on the Western Front as a genuine award-season contender. Toby
For those of us who regularly revisit the same five to ten classic late 80s and 90s romcoms, we are in store for a treat. Nicholas Barber sets out why the genre has had such a big revival and the key difference between their older counterparts. Nimo
Elle Hunt’s interview with Sheila Liming, author of Hanging Out, “a paean to the pleasures of idling with others”, offers encouragement to us all to get back out there and see friends after years of Covid-enforced distance. Toby
Sport
Football | When the half-time whistle sounded, Tottenham were 2-0 up in their Premier League match against Manchester City, sending the Etihad Stadium into a state of uproar. But it was not to last; Pep Guardiola’s side came back strong in the second half, ending the match with an incredible 4-2 comeback.
Tennis | Andy Murray has described the effort it took to recover from two sets down against Thanasi Kokkinakis at the Australian Open as “unbelievable”, after he fought back to defeat the Australian in a near six hour match that finished after 4am on Friday morning.
Rugby | More than 55 amateur players are launching a lawsuit against rugby authorities, accusing them of negligence in failing to protect them from brain injury. It follows a similar but separate case involving more than 200 ex-professional players, although both cases are represented by the same law firm.
The front pages
The Guardian carries an exclusive: “Tory areas allocated more cash from levelling up fund”, a disclosure the papers says will provoke “fury from some regional leaders.”
The Financial Times reports “Central banks vow to ‘stay the course’ on high rates until inflation is tamed”, while the Mail’s view is “Britain’s ‘turned a corner’ … so now cut taxes!” The Times says that if the economic outlooks continues to improve “Hunt wants 5p fuel duty cut to run year longer”.
The i reports “EU wants Starmer to become British PM”, while the Telegraph looks ahead to a meeting of western officials about Ukraine with: “Stop stalling tanks deal, Nato allies tell Germany”.
Finally the Sun covers the news that Alec Baldwin is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter, after an accidental shooting on a film set, with the headline, “No one is above the law”.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
Little Demon (Disney+)
With flashes of the canny humanity that powered The Simpsons at its peak, this animated comedy stars Aubrey Plaza as demon-hunting witch Laura and Danny DeVito as Satan, who left her and their baby to it and has now swanned back into their lives a decade on. It isn’t perfect yet – but when it grows up it will unleash hell. Jack Seale
Music
Måneskin – Rush!
Whatever your musical predictions were back in 2021, they definitely didn’t include an international breakthrough by the runners-up of the Italian X Factor – but perhaps Måneskin are sharper operators than that narrative implies. Listening to Rush!, you’re struck by how canny their sound is, with a grab-bag of influences that’s perfect for the streaming era. What it lacks in heft, it makes up for in enthusiasm. Alexis Petridis
Film
Babylon
Damien Chazelle returns to that tinsel town movie world where he made his breakthrough with La La Land. This one is all about the chaos and excess of 1920s silent era Hollywood, a topic it approaches by being stridently chaotic and excessive. Yet it’s always a pleasure to be in the presence of such blackbelt movie stars as Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie (above, with Diego Calva). Peter Bradshaw
Podcast
The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome
Ringing in the ears, dizziness, a sound so loud it feels like pressure: the symptoms of Havana syndrome are so bad that US vice-president Kamala Harris’s 2021 visit to Vietnam was delayed due to possible cases. But despite investigations by the FBI and the CIA, no one knows what causes the mysterious condition. Along with spies and neurologists, Nicky Woolf investigates. Hannah Verdier
Today in Focus
Joe Biden, Donald Trump and those classified documents
American presidents face many era-defining challenges: wars, pandemics, recessions. But one that gets less attention and seems to keep haunting them is paperwork.
As David Smith tells Michael Safi, batches of classified documents have now been found at Joe Biden’s office and home and it’s left the US president with a legal headache, but perhaps more pressing: a political one.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
According to a new study, low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the UK are reducing the number of cars within their boundaries without pushing traffic on to neighbouring roads. The study found a reduction in motor traffic within the zones – which use bollards, planters or traffic cameras to keep motor vehicles out – of 32.7% (median) and 46.9% (mean). The percentage of streets with an average of fewer than 1,000 cars a day also rose from 41% to 66%.
Prof Rachel Aldred, the director of the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy (ATA) and co-author of the study, said: “The research indicates there has been overall ‘traffic evaporation’”.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until Monday.
