Jacinda Ardern: I was days away from learning if I’d run the country. But I waited on even bigger news

It was a standard bathroom. The kind you’d find in a 1950s timber home just about anywhere in New Zealand, with a dark linoleum floor and small handbasin – enough of a bowl to wash your hands, but not enough to contain all the water while you do it. I had pulled the lid down over the toilet and was sitting on top of the hard plastic. Waiting. My heart beat a little faster than usual.

On the other side of the door, I could hear my friend Julia moving around her kitchen – roasting pans hitting the side of the sink, plates clinking against one another as she stacked them. She was likely scraping away the remains of yet another dinner I had only pushed around my plate. Julia was an excellent cook. I was just a nervous eater. Especially now.

Jacinda Ardern never set out to become leader of her party, much less prime minister of New Zealand.Credit: Getty

For the past seven weeks, I had been living on cheese, crackers and my mother’s homemade bliss balls – giant, energy-laden lumps of puréed dates, cashews and chia seeds that had a tendency to take up residency in my front teeth. That might be fine if these golf ball-sized snacks were being eaten in the privacy of my own home, but I had been eating them in public in the middle of a campaign. A campaign to determine whether I would become the 40th prime minister of New Zealand. Weeks had passed since election night, and I still couldn’t answer that question.

But at this particular moment, sitting in Julia’s bathroom, that wasn’t the question I was waiting to answer.

I glanced at my phone. Just a few more minutes.

That night at Julia’s was meant to be a break. A chance to catch my breath while my partner, Clarke, was away filming a TV show. As soon as I’d dragged my overnight bag through the door of my friend’s home, I’d changed out of my work clothes. I couldn’t face another night in my small studio apartment, the one I lived in when doing government work in Wellington. Not after the long days of negotiating and waiting.

On election night, both of New Zealand’s two major political parties, the conservative National Party and the progressive Labour Party I led, finished without a clear majority. That meant neither leader could form a government yet. For one of us to win and become prime minister, we’d need to build a coalition with a smaller party called New Zealand First. And so, for the past eight days, the parties had been in talks. For all the back-and-forth in the negotiations, for all the discussion about which policies we would implement and which we wouldn’t, the calculation was simple. Either New Zealand First would choose the National Party, or they would choose us.

After every meeting, I’d leave with pages of notes, but it was the body language I was watching. A nod of the head. Eye contact. Something, anything, that would tell me what their choice would be. But there was nothing.

The media diligently reported on the talks each night. They had no insights as to what might happen, so kept repeating what I already felt deeply: “The stakes are high.” But the stakes felt huge throughout the campaign. After all, I was 37 years old. I’d been the leader of my party for less than 80 days. And when the campaign started, we had been trailing by more than 20 points. We were never meant to win. And I was never meant to be leader.

I pulled at my leggings, fidgeting. Surely time’s up. I glanced at my phone again. One more minute.

My whole short life, I had grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough. That at any moment I would be caught short, and that meant, no matter what I was doing, that I had no business doing it. That’s why I believed my personality was better suited to work behind the scenes. I was the worker who quietly, steadily got things done. I wasn’t tough enough to become an actual politician. My elbows weren’t sharp enough; my skin was too thin; I was idealistic and sensitive.

Becoming a member of parliament, I was certain, had been happenstance. But it turned out my fear of failing, of letting people down, was overshadowed by a grinding sense of responsibility. And so, as unlikely as it had once seemed, I became the deputy leader of my party, then leader, and now, possibly, the next prime minister.

The noise in the kitchen had stopped. Julia was probably sitting back at the dining room table, busying herself until my return. Julia was younger than me but also maternalistic, with a background in healthcare. Our conversations always started with her asking me the same question: “How are you feeling?” Today, when I told her that I didn’t feel quite right and described a few unusual symptoms, she’d bought a pregnancy test. At the end of dinner, she’d pulled it out of a shopping bag as if it were an after-dinner mint. “Just in case,” she said.

And now that test was sitting on the edge of the sink, waiting for its big reveal. I looked down at the timer on my phone: 25 seconds, 23 seconds, 21.

Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford with their daughter, Neve Te Aroha Ardern-Gayford, in 2018.Credit: Getty

I was days away from learning if I would run a country, and now, as I sat in the bathroom, I was seconds away from learning if I would do it while having a baby.

I closed my eyes and lifted my head to the ceiling. Then I took a deep breath, opened my eyes and looked down.

Extracted from A Different Kind of Power (Penguin Random House) by Jacinda Ardern, out now.

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