What Keir Starmer can learn from Jacinda Ardern

The Labour Party won’t want to steal all of the New Zealand PM’s policies but it could certainly borrow her positive outlook, writes Sean O'Grady

Ardern renewed her mandate with a landslide election victory at the weekend (AFP/Getty)

It is tempting for those on the progressive wing of politics to imagine that Jacinda Ardern’s remarkable victory in New Zealand marks a political turning point – not only for her country but the democratic world. 

In a sort of domino effect, the tablets of nationalist populism could gradually fall; a Joe Biden victory in the US next, with Donald Trump, the biggest domino gone... then a Conservative Party coup to remove Boris Johnson and – who knows – Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan following suit. Maybe even Vladimir Putin? Well, it is a little fanciful. More practically there are some immediate lessons for the British Labour Party from the success of its Kiwi counterpart.  

First is style. Ardern’s is bright, optimistic, aspirational and illuminated by that trademark smile. Too often left leaders fall into a miserabilist trap, banging on about failure and filing their propaganda with images of kids in poverty or patients on ventilators. That’s not to deny the reality of deprivation and the destitution that many families are falling into, nor the strains on the NHS. It is merely to point out that to catch the attention of the voters you’re better off not depressing them.