Jacinda Ardern
Jacinda Ardern was prime minister of New Zealand from October 2017 to January 2023, elected leader of a failing Labour party seven weeks before the election at thirty-seven, prime minister by the choice of a populist kingmaker after it, the second head of government in modern history to give birth in office, the face the world saw after a white supremacist murdered fifty-one Muslims at prayer in Christchurch in March 2019, when she wore a headscarf to the mosque, said they are us, refused to speak the killer's name and had semi-automatic weapons banned within a month, and the government that shut the country's borders in March 2020 and kept the virus out for a year and a half, which won her the first outright majority under proportional representation in October 2020 and, when the lockdowns and the mandates wore out their welcome, the anger that made her resign, saying she no longer had enough in the tank. She was born in Hamilton in 1980, the daughter of a police officer, raised a Mormon in Murupara and Morrinsville and left the church over its position on gay rights, worked in Helen Clark's office and in the Cabinet Office in London under Blair, was president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, and entered parliament on the list in 2008. She became deputy leader in March 2017 and leader in August when Andrew Little quit, and the polls moved twenty points. Winston Peters chose Labour over National in October and made her prime minister with the Greens as well. The child, Neve, was born in June 2018, and Peters was acting prime minister for six weeks. The programme was wellbeing budgets, child poverty targets, a ban on offshore oil exploration, a climate law, and a house-building scheme that built almost nothing. The record was the crises. Christchurch, the Whakaari volcano in December 2019, and the pandemic, in which the early, hard lockdown held the death toll to a few dozen while other countries counted thousands. The eliminationist strategy became, by 2022, the occupation of parliament's grounds by anti-mandate protesters and threats that needed a police detail. She married the broadcaster Clarke Gayford after leaving office, was made a dame, went to Harvard, and published a memoir in 2025; Her successor lost the election of October 2023.
- Lived: 1980 CE – ?
- Nationality: New Zealander
- Roles: prime minister, politician
