After a lengthy betrothal it’s now or never for Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford
Almost a year to the day after Jacinda Ardern said to her fiance ‘Let’s finally get married,’ they’re tying the knot this weekend. Finally!
Finally. After what might be the longest engagement in New Zealand public life, the country’s former prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, appears set to marry her long-term companion this weekend — and, perhaps, rekindle the political love affair her country once enjoyed with her.
The nuptials will reportedly take place on Saturday 13th at an “elite venue” in Hawke’s Bay, according to the news site Stuff. Neither Ardern nor her fiance, Clarke Gayford, with whom she has a four-year-old daughter, have commented publicly on the reports.
Certainly, their lengthy betrothal seems to have reached the point of now-or-never. It’s almost a year to the day that Ardern announced she was leaving politics and publicly told her fiance, “Let’s finally get married!”
Ardern could have married Gayford a dozen years ago, of course, when the still-tender Labour Party MP with the pearly gated smile and the tousle-haired television presenter with the air of a slightly overworked florist first became a romantic item around Auckland. The two got engaged in 2019.
Two summers ago, the two were also set to tie the knot in Hawke’s Bay, on that occasion at Nick’s Head Station, a picturesque 661-hectare homestead located amid sculpted gardens in Muriwai, near Gisborne, not unlike the rich farmlands on the other side of the island where Ardern enjoyed her own privileged childhood. The wedding would have been the first for any New Zealand leader while in office.
No doubt, it would have served as another career-capping event in a political life that seldom lacked for such moments.
Ardern’s great political proficiency was in her photogenicity, a subject she studied at the New Zealand’s University of Waikato, where she majored in public relations. This she took to giddy local heights after becoming the country’s youngest leader in more than a 150 years in 2017, and then to international acclaim during the early part of the pandemic.
For a time, or so it seemed to admirers in Australia and elsewhere, she even appeared to achieve the impossible in single-handedly vanquishing Covid.
Covid, alas, had other ideas, putting paid to plans for the 2022 wedding and much else besides. Not only did the arrival of Omicron bring the curtain down on the ceremony itself but it spelt the end of Ardern’s almost mystical media reputation as having somehow kept the virus at bay by sheer force of personality and, usually with the wag of a finger and her trademark frown of concern, endlessly enjoining Kiwis to “be kind”.
Part of the 43-year-old’s wider left-of-centre appeal during the period was also about who she wasn’t: She wasn’t Trump. She wasn’t Boris. She wasn’t Scott Morrison.
But when the body count from the virus started climbing to the more familiar levels witnessed abroad and miracles became in short supply for an economy roiled by perpetual lockdowns and spiralling crime levels, many of her compatriots started to wonder if she wasn’t “Saint” Jacinda Ardern, either.
Since abruptly stepping down from office last January, Ardern has largely been quiet on the political front, working instead on a coming book for Penguin Random House on how to be “your own kind of leader and still make a difference”, for which she reportedly received a $1.5 million advance.
It may simply be that she has also been busy drawing up this month’s closely guarded guest-list.
There would be no shortage of A-listers keen to attend.
Certain to put in an appearance, for instance, will be at least some of the medical eminences who once formed a phalanx around Ardern’s reputation as a virus-slayer.
Among the small number of former parliamentary colleagues likely to be in Hawke’s Bay will be Ardern’s former finance minister and friend Grant Robertson. There could also be one or two of the new stateside contacts she has forged in recent months during her two fellowships engaging with students and faculty on building skills in “principled leadership” at Harvard University.
Posting on X, one local wit speculated that arriving guests might get to enjoy a limited-edition vaccine-booster shot, handcrafted in small batches and injected with a celebratory smile by one or other of the epidemiologists who briefly flared as academic rock stars.
Not to mention an actual rock star. Ed Sheeran, for example, pronounced himself thrilled beyond belief about Ardern’s engagement when it was first announced, and has said he will, if called upon, make himself available to perform on the day for the woman he says is “the best human on the planet”.
His services may not be required. Local singer Lorde, who doesn’t appear to be touring at the moment, was also secretly booked to put in an appearance last time and may yet be up for one again.
On the other hand, both Ardern and Gayford are one-time DJs in their own right, and could just as easily take to the turntable themselves and spin a beloved Coldplay album. And why not?
Let the bride now kiss the groom.
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