Hate to say it

A new account of Jacinda Ardern's time in office gives generous space to her detractors, but sheds some light on her government's fatal flaws.

- DANYL MCLAUCHLAN

The challenge facing biographers of Jacinda Ardern is that her early life is unremarkable: Morrinsville, the fish and chip shop, Mormonism, a comms degree at Waikato, political operative, list MP.

Then it becomes markedly remarkable: the Labour leadership, victory, pregnancy, global fame, the March 15 Christchurch mosque shootings, Covid, the protests and occupation, the decline and resignation. But we've just lived through all of this; it's painfully present in our minds.

There are countless interviews and profiles, a number of existing biographies and Ardern herself is hard at work curating and polishing her historical record. What else is there to say?

The premise of Jacinda: The Untold Stories is that much of what we know is marketing and propaganda, a web spun by a master manipulator, facilitated by an obsequious and captured media.

David Cohen - a journalist, author and Listener contributor - attempts to “unriddle the enigma behind that political smile”; to show us the real Jacinda and the truth about her life and politics “pieced together after interviews with scores of the people who knew her best”.

This project quickly runs into trouble: its account of Ardern's early career and years in opposition relies on observers like former Act leader Rodney Hide, current Act leader David Seymour, National Party pollster David Farrar, New Zealand First MP Shane Jones, former Green MP Sue Bradford, political scientist Bryce Edwards and Matt McCarten, former chief of staff to David Cunliffe, Ardern's antagonist during Labour's prolonged civil war. These seem rather like people Cohen knows who also had some marginal – generally adversarial – acquaintance with Ardern.