Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls time

Peter Davis 23rd January 2023

Jacinda Ardern’s resignation reflects the tough headwinds young progressive women face as political leaders.

Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand
Never struggled to do human: Jacinda Ardern in Christchurch in the wake of the massacre of Muslim worshippers (appaloosa / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Last Thursday Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister, announced at the first Labour parliamentary party meeting of the year that she would be stepping down, saying she no longer had ‘enough in the tank’ to do the job. This in an election year with Labour languishing in the polls.

At the same time, she announced that the triennial parliamentary election due this year would take place on October 14th. Under Labour Party rules, the timing of the announcement of her retirement in relation to the election date allowed the parliamentary party (‘the caucus’) to decide her successor, as long as it could realise a two-thirds majority. The caucus has since selected Chris Hipkins as prime minister and Carmel Sepuloni, of Pacifika heritage, as deputy.

How did it come to this, that a political leader once widely applauded, at home and abroad, has decided to step down before her term is up? And are there lessons to be learned about the role of female leaders—particularly those who are young and left of centre—in an era when democracies can be under threat, populism is often on the rise and the expectations and demands of leaders are high?

Empathetic and humanitarian

Ardern, at 37, was the youngest female prime minister to come to power in the country when her party entered a coalition with the New Zealand First (NZF) party in 2017. She was young, unmarried, a superb communicator and committed to a more empathic and humanitarian style of leadership and government, with a constituency drawing on youth, women, public-sector workers, urban professionals and Pacifika and Māori voters. NZF, by contrast, was a populist, centrist party with a determination to deliver to the regions of New Zealand, the elderly and some special-interest groups.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The government was at first unspectacular and its prospects unpromising. What transformed it—and put Ardern on the world stage—was the response to a series of crises: the massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers by a white extremist gunman in March 2019, a volcanic eruption occasioning the loss of 22 lives among tourists in December that year and the arrival of Covid-19 in February 2020. In each instance, Ardern demonstrated a style and depth of leadership that was at once emotionally engaging, unifying and effective, and this transformed her standing nationally and abroad.

Such was the response to the pandemic that Ardern was able to lead her party in the 2020 election to capture 50 per cent of the vote. This was a feat only matched by Labour in the depths of the 1930s depression and by the conservative National Party in 1951 amid the gathering winds of the cold war.  

Tricky balancing act

The management of Covid-19 proved however not only a high point but also a harbinger of electoral decline. Death rates in New Zealand were among the lowest internationally while its economic performance was among the best. This was achieved by border closures, limited lockdowns and highly successful vaccination campaigns. By the time of the delta and omicron variants, however, the gloss had worn off—particularly given the tricky balancing act of trying to raise vaccination among disadvantaged populations, such as Pacifika and Māori, while more advantaged groups were fully vaccinated and chafing under the public-health restrictions.

In one sense this was just the turn of the electoral cycle, unexpected as it may seem against the backdrop of the spectacular majority achieved in 2020. But the pandemic also brought to the surface and catalysed an antagonism, hostility and polarisation rarely seen in New Zealand, much of it levelled at Ardern personally. While the prime minister was able to mingle easily with people in 2020 and 2021, last year she could not even disclose her schedule of public engagements, for fear of personal attack and retribution.

The government has performed creditably, although not strikingly, on a traditional social-democratic agenda: housing the homeless, investing in health and education (particularly vocational), reducing poverty, supporting living standards (particularly those of the disadvantaged and low-skilled), protecting the environment and setting the stage for climate-change mitigation and adaptation. But with a change of government—which on current polling looks likely—much of that agenda could be weakened, if not reversed.

Lessons to be learned

So what lessons should be learned from the rise and apparent fall in prospects for this promising and effective young female political leader of a mainstream social-democratic party in an otherwise functional and vibrant liberal democracy?

  • The lot of female political leaders, particularly left-of-centre, is never easy. There are depths of misogyny, suspicion and outright hostility which cannot be wished away. One only has to consider in the English-speaking world the fates of Hillary Clinton in the United States and Julia Gillard in Australia.
  • It is better to under-promise and over-deliver when it comes to policy. Ardern’s government was early described, not always in good faith, as seeking to be transformational, but that can set up an administration to fail.
  • In the modern era of intense media competition, the narrative for a left-of-centre government is rarely positive. On almost every major policy, and at almost every turn in the government’s successful response to Covid-19, the media inevitably found failings and rarely provided balanced coverage.
  • When it comes to the new spectre of inflation, debt accumulation and the threat of recession, an incumbent government is almost inevitably likely to suffer electorally.
  • The vested interests of opposition to the social-democratic agenda will not go away. In the lead-up to this election year the conservative opposition party has garnered donations from a few wealthy individuals amounting to at least ten times what Labour has been able to attract from its many thousands of members.
  • Finally, ‘social media’ have added an edge of fear, conspiratorialism, misinformation, hatred and opposition that was not there even a decade ago, making it that much harder for a social-democratic government to advance a traditional agenda.

In expanding on her reasons for calling time, Ardern mentioned the poignant personal goals of seeing her young daughter start school and, yes, marrying her fiancée of several years. But it is hard to believe that the onslaught of media negativity and the personal attacks via ‘social media’ had not taken their toll. It is also possible that, in a selfless manner, she considered that her party might fare better in the coming elections with fresh leadership in the public eye.

‘Queen of woke’

It is one of the cruel ironies of politics that a young woman leader of such achievement at home and recognition abroad should feel the need to withdraw from it. The conservative media have sought to dance on her grave—the Australian derided Ardern as ‘the queen of woke’ who had left chaos in her wake.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Far from it. She has a legacy of which she can be proud. But she has called time at a crucial moment in her life. I expect her to be back in the public arena, on her own terms.

As the Maori saying goes, Kia Kaha Jacinda Ardern—stay strong.

Peter Davis
Peter Davis

Peter Davis is chair of the Helen Clark Foundation, an independent public-policy think tank. He is emeritus professor of population health and social science at the University of Auckland.

You are here: Home / Politics / What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls time

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
artists,cultural workers Europe’s stars must shine for artists and creativesIsabelle Van de Gejuchte
transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin
central and eastern Europe,unions,recognition Social dialogue in central and eastern EuropeMartin Myant
women soldiers,Ukraine Ukraine war: attitudes changing to women soldiersJennifer Mathers and Anna Kvit

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube