Jacinda Ardern leading the UN? God help us

Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, is reportedly in the running to be the next UN secretary-general. Rarely has a person seemed so suited for a job: an overpraised politician with no ability leading an ineffective organisation with no accountability.

After graduating, having obtained a BA in communication studies at the University of Waikato, Ardern worked as a political staffer and, for a brief period, was the president of the International Union of Socialist Youth. She became a Labour MP having never had what most of us would call a real job.

Like many career politicians, Ardern is painfully wanting in substance. None of this mattered, however, when she was elected prime minister in 2017 at the age of just 37. Immediately, she was celebrated as the antidote to the ‘fascism’ of Donald Trump and the populism represented by Brexit. The establishment rallied fiercely behind her.

In the eyes of her supporters, Ardern doesn’t have a political legacy so much as a moral legacy. She was portrayed as a kinder, gentler, unashamedly ‘feminist’ type of leader. Her great early achievement was giving birth while in office, an event that was hailed as if it were as momentous as the achievement of women’s suffrage.

Now, Ardern does have a political legacy, it is just entirely negative. Indeed, her six-year prime ministership amounts to one long assault on democracy and humanity.

Outside of China, no country imposed a Covid lockdown as draconian as New Zealand’s. Under Ardern’s Zero Covid policy, citizens were banned from returning home. Her ‘no jab, no job’ policy coerced thousands of workers to choose between employment and a vaccination. Her decision to suspend the 2020 election because New Zealand had five active Covid cases set the tone for an authoritarianism that continued unabated throughout the pandemic. Fittingly, earlier this year, Ardern refused to attend the public inquiry into her pandemic policies.

Ardern must have realised that there was nothing to be gained from trying to defend the indefensible. Zero Covid, we can now say, was a public-health failure, as well as an exercise in cruelty. It simply delayed the inevitable, and reduced Covid deaths at the expense of increasing every other kind of fatal illness. Predictably, the economy contracted during the pandemic (New Zealand depends heavily on tourism) and inflation blew out to nearly eight per cent.

Despite Ardern’s unimpeachable global reputation, New Zealanders grew tired of her mix of incompetence and authoritarianism. In 2023, the final year of her premiership, a record number of people – particularly young people – left the country.

Ardern’s mediocre government came to a cynical end when she resigned months out from an election, claiming she had nothing left ‘in the tank’. In reality, it was a two-fingered salute to the people of New Zealand, who couldn’t fire her because she quit. Labour’s vote collapsed by more than 20 per cent at the following election, and a conservative government led by Christopher Luxon was formed almost entirely on the basis of repairing the damage Ardern had done. Its first act was repealing her pettiest policy: a generational smoking ban, which made it illegal for anyone born after 2009 to buy cigarettes – ever.

The extent of Ardern’s failures, however, never reached the shores of America or Europe. In establishment circles, Saint Jacinda remained as exalted as ever. She was rewarded with lucrative book deals and fellowships at Harvard and Oxford, among a litany of other highly paid non-jobs.

Now, the ultimate prize for a career politician is within reach. At the end of 2026, the UN secretary-generalship of António Guterres will be up. The selection process is reportedly already underway, and few aspirants are likely to have the supporters and resources to match Ardern’s.

Fortunately for her, the office currently held by Guterres is one that can hardly be degraded any further. Whether slyly blaming Israel for Hamas’s 7 October pogrom or issuing hysterical warnings about ‘global boiling’, Guterres has constantly demonstrated that being UN secretary-general has nothing to do with moral leadership, and everything to do with having the ‘right’ views on issues like climate change and the Middle East. It’s very much up Ardern’s alley.

For some time, there has been a sense of inevitability about Ardern’s return to the political fray. Indeed, as spiked editor Tom Slater noted after her resignation in 2023: ‘No doubt a plum job at the United Nations, the World Health Organisation or some other ghastly supranational body beckons.’

Most sane people gave up on the UN a long time ago, and Ardern’s leadership of this rotten institution would be unlikely to make much of a difference either way. But it would show that failed, authoritarian politicians continue to be rewarded, providing they mouth the right platitudes and tick the right boxes.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.