Book review: A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern

There’s a small but delightful moment during her very “different” kind of premiership, as twice-elected prime minister of New Zealand, that really sums up Jacinda Ardern.  

By late May 2020, she’d managed to flatten Covid’s curve considerably by initiating the world’s (then) strictest lockdown – all but eliminating the pandemic in New Zealand, early doors.  

To put this into perspective, while the UK would be recording 60,000 cases a day by January 2021 (approximately one in 50 people), at its peak, just 89 cases were reported daily in the land Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Sam Neill call home.  

But she’d really hit headlines just the month before, when during a national briefing she announced that two new essential workers had been added to the ranks.  

“You’ll be pleased to know that we do consider both the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny to be essential workers,” she reassured little Kiwis everywhere. (Though she did gently remind them their deliveries might face delays… “as you can imagine, at this time they’re going to be potentially quite busy at home with their family as well and their own bunnies.”)  

As we say: different. But Ardern has always followed her own path.  

In her new memoir A Different Kind of Power, she takes readers through her extraordinary journey from small-town New Zealand to becoming the world’s youngest female head of government.  

As the country’s 40th prime minister, her tenure also marked a radical departure from populist, divisive modern politics.  

Not for nothing has she been called the ‘Anti-Trump’. One of the early, defining moments of her leadership came in the wake of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that claimed the lives of 51 people: within just six days, her government had enacted sweeping gun control laws.  

She’d similarly make history as only the second world leader to give birth while in office. Her decision to take parental leave, with her partner Clarke Gayford assuming primary caregiving duties for their daughter, Neve, was considered nothing short of revolutionary.  

And over the following years, she’d use her platform to advocate on issues from climate change to child poverty, and gender equality. Before, burned out, she resigned in 2023, citing “nothing left in the tank”.  

So as moving, wise, and often funny as A Different Kind of Power is, it’s more than just a political account: really, it’s a rallying call for an alternative sort of leadership rooted in kindness and compassion.  

In 2018, a year after her first election, she’d tell the BBC, “It takes courage and strength to be empathetic… I am trying to chart a different path, and that will attract criticism, but I can only be true to myself and the form of leadership I believe in.”  

True strength, she suggests, lies in the ability to lead with humanity and heart. “I cannot determine what will define my time in this place,” she wrote in her final speech before Parliament. “But I do hope I’ve demonstrated something else entirely: that you can be anxious, sensitive, kind, and wear your heart on your sleeve. You can be a mother, or not. You can be a nerd, a crier, a hugger – you can be all of these things. And not only can you be here, you can lead. Just like me.” 

• A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ahern is out on 3 June, published by Pan Macmillan

Ali Catterall is an award-winning writer, journalist and filmmaker whose writing has featured in the Guardian, Time Out, GQ, Film4, Word magazine and the Big Issue, among many others. Ali is also the writer and director of the 2023 film Scala!!!

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