Jacinda Ardern proves the art of knowing when to quit
As New Zealand’s PM steps down, Gaby Hinsliff reflects on walking away from the dream job
SOMETIMES, YOU just know when it’s over. And for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, that time came on Thursday 19 January. After five and a half years in power, she announced she was quitting because, ‘I know what this job takes, and I know I don’t have enough in the tank to do it justice.’
Ardern insisted she had no hidden reason for going except that ‘I’m human’ and the last few years of rolling crises had been a lot. They included the horrific 2019 terrorist shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, a tense and potentially divisive moment for the country to which she responded with a powerful call for unity, declaring of the victims that ‘they are us’ and wearing a hijab as a sign of respect as she hugged grieving Muslim families.
A year later came the pandemic, and she famously urged New Zealanders to ‘be strong and be kind’ as she sealed the country’s borders – which stayed shut for almost two years in a high-stakes bid to keep the virus out. The strategy saved lives, but at painful economic and human cost. Polls now suggest her party is on track to lose this year’s elections.
But through all this Ardern has carried an extra weight of expectation on her shoulders, as only the second female leader to give birth while in office and (with her partner Clarke Gayford) a role model for couples where the father is the primary carer. ‘Can women really have it all?’ asked the BBC website when she quit, to a chorus of female groans. Funny how nobody asked if men can have it all when Boris Johnson, who had two children under five when he resigned, or when David Cameron announced the birth of his fourth baby.
Walking away from your dream job is never easy. But having done it myself, and written a book partly about what makes other parents do it, all I can say is the reasons are invariably complicated. And that’s why I take my hat off to Ardern for not letting anyone draw glib conclusions, or use this as a stick with which to beat other working mothers. True, she said she was looking forward to being there when her four-yearold daughter, Neve, starts school, and finally marrying Clarke (their planned wedding was cancelled due to Covid restrictions). But she explicitly didn’t say motherhood at this level had proved too tough. Instead she carefully framed this as a grown-up recognition that leadership means knowing when to stop. If anything, she seemed to be hinting at the kind of burnout many frontline workers experienced during Covid, explaining that she’d wanted to carry on but couldn’t find the reserves.
Ardern looked tearful on the podium, but walked away beaming. She’s shown that a woman can make it to the top, but can also quit at a time of her choosing and start over. At 42, she still has decades of working life in her. Somehow, I doubt we’ve heard the last of Jacinda Ardern.