One year since Jacinda saved Labour
Jacinda Ardern woke up one year ago today deputy leader of a flailing Labour Party. By the time she went to sleep that night she was leader of the party and well on the way to becoming Prime Minister.
Two nights before Andrew Little had done the unthinkable: spoke truthfully about his party’s failing fortunes.
In an interview with One
News following a disastrous Sunday night poll that had Labour on 24 per cent and the Greens on 15, Little admitted that he had considered resigning.
‘‘I’d be lying to you if I said I hadn’t thought about that. In fact I spoke to senior colleagues about that,’’ he said.
Little said his senior colleagues had urged him to stay on. Indeed – it’s understood Ardern herself was one of those colleagues refusing to consider a ‘‘plan B’’.
But the next day, a Monday, a
Newshub poll had confirmed the terrible numbers for Little. Labour MPs say nobody was doing ‘‘the numbers’’ but there were clearly phone calls – led by Kris Faafoi – about that ‘‘plan B’’ that were starting to happen.
The Tuesday morning caucus meeting became the natural deadline for Little to make a call.
We all awoke to plenty of signs that his leadership was on shaky ground, with reports of a no-confidence vote looming at the meeting. But Little confused the narrative a tad by telling a reporter at the airport he wouldn’t be quitting. And his staff and MPs were still holding that line – including Ardern.
It all felt a bit chaotic. Changing leaders or even thinking about it seven weeks out from the election seemed messy. But there were serious silver linings. The fact that it was so close to the election meant only the Labour MPs themselves got a vote – rather than the wider membership and associated unions, as had happened in earlier leadership elections, with the disastrous result of electing a leader the members liked but the MPs didn’t: David Cunliffe.
There was also a sense that there was nowhere to go but up. At 23 or 24 per cent Labour would find it hard to claim the mantle of even being the ‘‘opposition party’’ and would lose a decent chunk of Parliamentary funding to keep the party going. Someone needed to turn things around in order to save the furniture.
Things moved fast. Little called a press conference for 10am. He walked in, flanked by a sombre Faafoi and Carmel Sepuloni, clasped his hands on the lectern, and told us all he was stepping down.
Asked about his deputy, Little said he had ‘‘absolute confidence in Jacinda if she decides to step up and be the leader, and who knows what might happen’’.
Just after 11am the news broke that Ardern had been elected unopposed by her colleagues.
The mood began to shift. Ardern was easily one of the more likable MPs in Parliament, one of those people who managed to do all the things every politician has to do – evade questions, hold contradictory opinions – while seeming like a genuine human being.
Within an hour she had appeared at a press conference in the old Upper House chambers. The chaos seemed to clear away. Ardern gave the press conference performance of the century.
The gaggle of MPs behind her slowly let their solemn faces widen into grins, matching Ardern’s burgeoning ‘‘relentless positivity’’.
For those of us who lived through that day, it’s clear that Ardern won the election for the left.