Thoughtful memoir by the former prime minister of New Zealand.
Ardern’s story opens at a nervous crossroads: She may or may not be on the verge of assuming the leadership of her country, depending on the entanglements of parliamentary backroom brokering, and she may or may not be pregnant. It turns out that she both wins the job and is with child, which leads to the first of many critical moments she faces, with a sharp question raised: “Is it okay for the prime minister to take maternity leave while in office?” The scrutiny was already intense. At 37, Ardern was the country’s youngest leader in more than a century and a half, was a woman, was a leader of the leftist Labour Party—and, incidentally, was a lapsed Mormon. For all that, Ardern writes, in her first 100 days in office she and her team pushed through numerous reforms, including world-leading work on combating climate change, committing her country to carbon neutrality by 2050, “not because we want to…but because we have to.” No sooner did Ardern say those words than did news break of the Christchurch mass shootings of Muslim New Zealanders, which prompted changing gun laws that involved “debating the line between meaningful reform and onerous burden.” Add to that, soon after, the ravages of Covid-19. Thanks to a lockdown and general conformity to social distancing rules, New Zealand's life expectancy increased, Ardern notes. But even so, a swirl of online conspiracy theories fueled a kind of homegrown MAGA movement whose members even occupied Parliament, as if to ape the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack. It’s small wonder that Ardern resigned in 2023, a decision she relates with pained honesty about whether she had the will to continue in the job.
An account of life in the political trenches that is alternately inspiring and dispiriting.