Former Blair adviser to be new PM in New Zealand
NEW Zealand is set to appoint a 37-year-old woman who once worked for Tony Blair as its next prime minister.
The Labour Party’s Jacinda Ardern will become the country’s youngest leader in more than 150 years after the small New Zealand First party agreed to enter into a coalition.
Miss Ardern’s party came second to the conservative National Party in September’s election, but will come to power after joining with antiimmigration New Zealand First and the Green Party after 26 days of negotiations.
Miss Ardern was raised as a Mormon but is now agnostic because she thought the religion was too homophobic.
While working in Britain, she became a policy adviser in Tony Blair’s Cabinet Office in 2006, shortly before he was replaced as prime minister by Gordon Brown.