The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 137. Jacinda Ardern: Why I Stepped Down as Prime Minister of New Zealand

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

How should New Zealand navigate their complex web of alliances as the relationship between China and the US deteriorates? Jacinda Ardern was considered a beacon of hope when she came to office in 2017, how did she navigate this pressure? To what extent is politics about personal gratification and the pursuit of power?  Alastair and Rory are joined by the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, to answer all this and more.  Sign up to Revolut Business today via: https://get.revolut.com/z4lF/leading, and add money to your account to get a £200 welcome bonus. This offer’s only available until 7th July 2025 and other T&Cs apply. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Social Producer: Harry Balden Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Feature availability varies by plan. Fees and teas and fees apply. Whatever stage your business is at. With Revolut business, you're ready for what's next. Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. And we have today one of those very rare politicians who is known pretty much by one and all by a first name, Jacinda, as in Descinda Arden, who's a police officer's daughter from a pretty conservative part of New Zealand,

who went on to become leader of the Labour Party and prime minister while she was still in her 30s, and who even now, two years after leaving office, after six years in office, is still just in her mid-40s. She was raised as a Mormon. Her relationship with her faith is a fascinating part of her autobiography, a different kind of power. And I also find, found your relationship with politics really interesting because imposter syndrome is not something you often hear prime ministers admit to. And sometimes, sometimes I wondered if a reluctant leader might have been a better title. What I really enjoyed about the book, in many ways, it's a family memoir. It's about parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, husband. And I think above all, your daughter, Neve, who

was born while you were prime minister. We're going to get into all that. Plus, of course, dealing with lots of different world leaders, Donald Trump in his first term, Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Macron, and you dealt with some huge crises as well. COVID in common with every world leader, but particularly the Christchurch killings, which we'll talk about. So thank you very, very, very much for being here. Thank you. A real pleasure to be able to speak with you both. She said, can I, can I begin? One of the things that comes across in the book, is that you have a very unusual, very granular sense of your childhood and your past. I mean, much more than I would.

If I've written books and I've never written with that degree of sort of detail and focus on parents, grandparents. And the question of relationships, I mean, one of the themes that comes up is people not quite being honest within the family discoveries about people at the grandparent level. Have you got a sense of what that tells us about you? Why would that be something that you focus on? If I'm right, that maybe it is something that you maybe reflect on more than other people. It's a great question. You know, when I came to write those early years,

initially I remember thinking that, oh, well, if someone's picking up a political memoir, that's a bit that I kind of need to chronologically go through, but otherwise, perhaps skim over. at least I be seen to be dwelling on the trivial. But I went through this real process as I was beginning writing and going out and reading memoir. And I started by reading memoirs that weren't political, in part because I didn't want to find myself falling into the trap

of mimicking a particular style or a particular approach. And as I was reading these other memoirs, in particular, there was one that stood out to me, Lab Girl, and it was a story of a scientist and I remember being so taken by her early years and it really shifted my thinking on this idea first of all that those years are trivial and then I would talk to people, what was it about

this memoir that you enjoyed or that one and often with politicians people would tell me are the childhood sections because those are the pieces that you don't get to know when you're seeing someone in office and they often add this layer of colour and this insight that you otherwise don't get. So that grew up. me into the idea of actually, I shouldn't brush over this. People are interested in where your values

come from and how will they see that unless you really dive in? But on this question of granular, two things I think helped in writing those sections. One, you don't remember every day of your childhood. We remember moments. And because you only have moments, the moments I remember, I remember in great detail. I don't remember everything. But of that thing, I remember a lot. And so when I had a moment I remembered, I would write all the detail around it because I could still see it in my mind's eye. And I was certainly helped by the fact that my mother was someone who wrote in a journal on a regular basis. And she's such a generous person, my mother. And so when I started writing, she gave me her journals and said that I could draw on them.

And you can see, I think, in those years, what a difference they made to me as a reference. Your mum, Dacinda, she had pretty severe mental health struggles that you also, you also chronicle, had a breakdown. And I got the sense reading it. And again, correct me if this is wrong, but if you seeing your father as somebody unbelievably strong, very, very principled, police sergeant, very dedicated to community. And your mother, the sense I got was of you worrying about your mother quite a lot. Is that right? Well, the interesting thing, Alasda, is that description you gave for my father, I would have given for my mother as well. Okay.

Were it not for the fact that I witnessed one moment of fragility as a child, just one, but I had almost no idea of the scale of what she was going through. This was confined really to a particular. This is not by any stretch, a lifelong issue for my mum. She just had a particularly hard time when we lived in this small, isolated. community and I had that one insight that one day, but then as an adult coming back to it, recognizing that the only reason I had that one insight on that one day is because of the resilience of my mother and otherwise masking it for the rest of the time. You know, I just otherwise would not have known. Rory mentioned secrets. There was this kind of eye-popping moment

going through the book where you suddenly discover that the man you think is your dad's dad is not your dad's dad, somebody else that you also know is your dad's dad. Spoiler alert, Alistair. Oh shit, is that not allowed? I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I don't know. I don't know.

I think it will make people want to read it. It's like surprise everyone. I became prime minister as well. There's a real cliffanger in the book. What is going to happen with this election? Yeah, look, I really grappled with that, with whether or not that was a part of this story to share. And I think one of the.

reasons I came down on sharing it, it's because you put the moments that are formative, and the reason that moment was formative for me, because this was the first time, I think, as a young person, who's suddenly challenged with the idea that people are complex. Relationships are complex, lives are complicated, families are complicated, and when we're in an age of where we seem to be becoming more and more binary and sometimes less forgiving of one another, putting down on paper that one moment where I first realized that, you know, as a young person, all of the complexity in our lives felt important to me, even though I think that the issue that I grappled with was this idea that I was telling someone else's story. It wasn't

just mine. So I did talk to family members about it. It was really important to me that this memoir wasn't a disruptor in my family, but rather something that they felt a part of. So that was a bit of a journey there. And Justinda, just to summarize a little bit for people who go on to read the book, tell us a little bit about what this childhood was and what sort of young person you now think you were. I had a wonderful, a wonderful childhood. You know, I really did. You know, there'll be elements of the reading there that people will see a New Zealand childhood within it. Some of that, of course, was moving around with my father just a little bit as a policeman. And so we had, when I was really young, we had these few years.

in a small rural town called Murupara that was reliant on the forestry industry that experienced major economic disruption in the 1980s when New Zealand's economy very rapidly was opened up and went through a period of deregulation known as Rodinomics. And then onto the longer part of my childhood

where I essentially grew up, which was a rural community that Alistair referred to known as Morinsville, an agricultural community where, yeah, It's never had a progressive politician in the area that I lived in and felt like the only lefty in the village. But in many ways, that was defining for me as well. But we lived on a small orchard. Whilst my father was a policeman and my mom was in a job that allowed her to be around for us,

she ran our school canteen at my local public high school, we lived on a block of land where I've learned to drive tractors and ride on motorbikes and help out on the orchard. So I had an incredible childhood with an amazing family. I was very lucky. And, Jacinda, tell us about the faith. Rory is a faith person. I'm a, I don't do God. But you were raised as a Mormon.

It's one way to describe, is that atheism? Or are you, do you subscribe to a less, the less certain agnostic? I'm not a Richard Dawkins guy. I'm a pro-faith atheist. I'm interested in faith. prophysicist, yeah. Yeah, and I was fascinated by your relationship with faith because I got the feeling, you know, I've known you for a bit and talked to you.

And I had no idea that it was such a big part of your childhood. And then you struggled with it for as long as you did. So just taught me, talk us through that. I found that fascinating. And maybe part of the reason it's a bit of an unknown is because, yeah, I did see religion and faith as not something to be kept hidden, but a relatively private. kind of questioned. And if you choose to put that out into the world by all means, but if it's

something that you carry with you is more of a intimate detail about your life, so be it. And so perhaps for me it was never really something that New Zealanders felt the need to have a strong line of questioning, never hid that I was raised in the Mormon church, always happy to talk about it, but I never really was called upon to talk about it in the level of detail that I did until I put my life onto a page. And it felt important to include, again, because in that question of where did your values come from, I can't separate out those that came from family versus those that came from religion. The Mormon faith, or the Latter-day Saint faith, is a very service-orientated religion, and so that was a big part of my life. But equally, it forced to be a very service-oriented religion. And so,

me to confront a hierarchy of values because in the one sense, you know, faith was, of course, very important to my family and also to me, but then, you know, as I got older, I had this other set of values that I was forming and one was the idea of inclusivity and, in my mind, the importance of supporting those who identified as LGBTQ plus and the set of legal rights that I believe they should therefore have. So even as a Mormon university student, I was writing essays arguing for civil unions. And mostly I papered over what you'd describe of that cognitive dissonance,

but it really came to a head the more I got involved in politics, or essentially something had to give. How did your doubt feel about that? You know, I never had a direct conversation with my dad about it. I had many with my mum, many, many with my mum because I really grappled with it. I found it incredibly confronting and hard

in part because it wasn't just about faith for me, it was about identity. And if I left that behind, what was my value framework? Who was I? And I think in part that comes as a result if you're a member of a faith that's you know, relatively lightly represented as in I grew up with 50 other Mormons in my hometown.

For most people, I was the only Mormon they knew. So it actually becomes a really strong part of your identity. I'll just into the Mormon from Warren's Hall. So giving that up, I felt like I was really losing something of myself. So lots of chats with mum, but none really with my dad. But one day I asked my mum what dad thought. And she said, your father said to me, Jacinda makes a lot of really big decisions all of the time.

We should trust her to make this one. Okay. Just finding on this, how did your family end up as being Mormons? And I mean, it's a sort of fascinating faith. I mean, Mormons believe, I believe that ancient Israelites arrived in America and sort of 600 BC and that there was a divine revelation in New York in 1820, and there's this whole new thing called the Book of Mormon. And so from the outside, it's a very confusing thing to understand, both the faith.

and also how someone like you becomes a Mormon? Well, to answer your question, door knocking, Rory, just good old door knocking. You know, the members of the LDDS Church are very, it's a very active church in terms of community outreach. And so missionaries knocked on the door of my nana in the small town of Tearoja, and she converted and then her children were raised in the Mormon faith.

So it was as simple as that. But I think this goes to a question of perception, I mean, for members of the LDS Church, they would describe themselves as Christians. They would see themselves as just generally under the banner of Christianity and subscribe to the Bible and the King James version as well. Of course, they have some additional beliefs within that as well. But often one of the things you observe about the Mormon faith is that that element of how they see themselves is not always, of how they see themselves, is not always recon. Let's go to politics now. What did you think of my alternative title for the book, The Reluctant Leader?

So you know what? When I was going through the title, angst, which I'm sure you're both familiar with, when I was a backbench MP, I think I was the opposition spokesperson for youth affairs. I had been asked to give a talk at some Labor Party fundraiser. I found an old PowerPoint presentation, and that was the heading, the reluctant leader. And so I think it's, yeah, I had that kind of in my head, I guess, for a while. But I think one of the issues for me is that in a way it diminished the privilege that I saw with being Prime Minister. And the fact that I, you know, once you're in that role, I mean, let's not diminish the fact that you've been given this incredible chance in politics. And so I almost felt like it trivialized where I ended up a little bit.

I don't know if that makes sense. one of the titles that I toyed with for a long time was run. Yeah. Because the dual meaning of, you know, the idea of running for office or running away from ideas of leadership. But then, of course, the publisher pointed out to me that it might sound like I'm trying to share with people how they should train for a marathon as a jogger. So it was sideline. But Rory, your cover was one of the covers that I put to the publisher and said, you know, politics on the edge. I love this cover. Can we do something like this? And

their response was, no in our country, no one knows who you are. You have to have your photo. So, yeah, there is. You've been doing many, many things, but one of those things is teaching the States. And I wonder whether I could imagine that you were talking to a group of Americans, because we've got a lot of British American listeners. And just explain what New Zealand is. and what this country was that you went into the politics of so that we can sort of get a sense of how it sits in the world. Remind us, what's distinctive about New Zealand? How would you explain it to somebody in America or Britain

who didn't know much about it? I mean, look, I'll be honest. Most often when I'm starting off with an audience and I'm giving a descriptor my first thing because beautiful country, wonderful people come and visit. He's once an ambassador, always an ambassador. It doesn't help as much that. No, but for the rest of my life, I will almost be like a member of New Zealand Tourism Bureau.

And in a way, that reflects that perhaps what people see or expect or know, beautiful country, wonderful people. And that is true. But when you're in politics, what sits those layers down? Well, first of all, I think defining for me is the fact that, you know, in New Zealand, highly, you know, engaged voting public. that. Now, I don't want to overstate that, but if you're looking simply at the metric of turnout in elections, you know, you're looking at normally something like 80%. And, you know, when we perhaps contrast that with the UK and registered voters, I think, what, closer to 60, we have an engaged population. Not to also trivialise, though, the different representative

system that we have. And maybe we can come to that later. I was the third female prime minister. That makes a difference, you know. You're the second female prime minister. Minister of New Zealand that we've had on the podcast. Yes, yes. Maybe you should go for the Trovector. So it makes a difference, in part, because on the one hand, I never came through politics thinking that my gender would define where I might end up. And I don't underestimate that.

Secondly, of course, I was young. I was 37 in my country elected me. Not only that, they elected me and supported me while I had a baby while I was in office. I say all of that because it gives you a bit of an insight. Some might say that indicates that New Zealand is progressive. I actually think highly pragmatic, highly pragmatic. Can I be mean and maybe push sort of back to an even more basic level? What are the fundamental problems of New Zealand?

I mean, let's say somebody said, you listen, okay, you've given this beautiful story of this beautiful country, this welcoming progressive people. So why the hell do we need politicians? I mean, what's the point of view if everything's so hunky-dory? and presumably there are problems. So tell us about where those problems are. Well, look, you know, I see this pattern everywhere. In New Zealand, we have in recent decades struggled to ensure that we have the equality that we aspire to,

that we have the financial security that we believe fundamentally that people deserve, that we have the housing that people deserve, and that we live up to the perception. So this is probably if I would give you like an umbrella state, New Zealand has a wonderful reputation that we have perhaps in part moved a little further and further away from. And so I remember really in 2017, part of our pitch was, let's just bring us back to where we believe ourselves to be, who we believe ourselves to be. Clean, green, an inclusive and equitable place. We have child poverty that any country of wealth would be ashamed of, high levels of domestic,

an intimate partner violence, a housing crisis, and we were grappling with environmental issues and living up to our reputation on climate change. Those are some of the fundamental issues we've grappled with. Then ultimately, as politicians, trying to deliver on that quickly and in a meaningful way, I'd say was one of the things that really challenged us when we were in office.

I want to get back to your emotionalism. The book, your dedication is, quote, to the criers, the huggers. I'm not as you. You're dead to hear your book to yourself here to sit there. The cryers, the warriors and the huggers. Do you know, I have to tell you, when I first got the copy in a back, that dedication was written in italics.

And huggers did not look like huggers when it was written in italics. The age looked rather more like a bee. Okay. To the team, that's a really unorthodox dedication. Let's just dry down a bit. You say several times in the book that you have this sense of imposter syndrome. your dad always said he thought you were too thin-skinned for politics. Phil Goff, who later would become the leader of the Labour Party.

He said to you once, Jacinda, if they ever ask you to run, just say no. And you said, no way, I'm not doing it. It's too brutal. It's too. This is to that's why I had the sense of reluctant leadership, is that the chips fell very much your way. People recognised your talent. They gave you opportunities.

And pretty suddenly, you became leader and prime minister. but I never got a sense in the book of a kind of yearning political drive that a lot of politicians have to get to the top. I would probably characterize it in a slightly different way. I had political drive. I didn't have personal drive. Now that's not to say I had no ambition for myself. I wanted to be good at my job.

I wanted people to believe I was good at my job. But that did not in my mind need to equate to a particular level of office. I certainly didn't have the ambition to leave my party and I absolutely therefore did not have the ambition to be Prime Minister and that's because it's one thing to want to be the best politician you can be. It's another to perceive that you have the skillset and ability to run the country.

My motivation though and I stuck it out in opposition, which is a fairly brutal place to be for nine years because I was highly motivated by issues and change. I've always described myself a pragmatic idealist. I believed politics was a place you could make a difference. But in a structure like ours, you can feel like you're making that difference from a range of different places.

So you're right, but I'd add a little nuance. It was just direct personal ambition. You have this phrase that I, this sentence, sensitivity was my weakness, my tragic flaw, the thing that might stop me from sticking with the work I love. And I love the account. You have this account of you get sort of howled at

in the chamber and it really kind of gets you. And you go and look at this guy, Trevor Mallard, who's one of your big bruises. And you say, look, Trevor, I need to toughen up. What do I do? How do I toughen up? And he basically said, you don't toughen up because what you've got is kind of empathy and soul and all that stuff. So I found that fascinating that you felt you had to toughen up.

And yet one of the tough guys said, stay how you are. I thought I needed to toughen up because it hurt, putting a bear. bit of colour to that. I mean, what does that mean? Well, you know, New Zealand has a Westminster style. You know, that back and forth and that aggression that you see in the House of Commons, we have that. You know, we have question time.

Ours is slightly different than yours, but our question time for MPs, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, an hour, 12 questions on notice, a bunch of supplementaries, and you're just, you're going for it. You're either trying to claim scalps, catch someone out, ultimately bring someone down. And I remember the commentary over who was a good opposition MP and who was a bad one. And the good ones were the ones who claimed scalps, cause ministers to lose their job, expose scandal. You know, that was the metric. But that's not necessarily the voter metric, but it was certainly the publicized metric,

the metric that you would see in the commentary. And I didn't want to necessarily engage in that kind of politics. but where would that leave me as a successful politician or not? So I remember really thinking about that. What am I willing to trade off? And then, of course, there was what was I willing to endure in the debating chamber? And so in times when actually it did feel brutal, I thought either I need to harden up or I'm not going to last in this place. And the real epiphany for me was realizing over time that those things that I thought were weaknesses,

were actually connected to something else that I valued. You know, that sensitivity and that thin-skinned kind of nature. Yeah, it was empathy. And I didn't want to get rid of that. Trevor was right. It's what makes politicians good at their job. That imposter syndrome, the thing that made me over-prepare, actually that was a useful motivation as well.

You want an over-prepared politician, particularly when a crisis strikes. And it also probably brings a bit of humility it's a thing that makes you bring in experts and advisors, and heck, if you have a pandemic, isn't that what you want as well? So realizing that these things actually bought something to leadership was a journey I had to go on.

Okay, Jacinda, Rory, quick break, and then back for more. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers, The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research, UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, But imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, cancer research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 40 cells. before cancer develops.

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Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zavarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to

come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing. which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her.

We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alastair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you.

We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts. Just so much there. Let's maybe start with the final comment about knowledge and humility and being an imposter. I went to see a friend of mine who's recently become a Labour minister yesterday. And we were sitting with civil servants and I was suddenly reminded of what a very, very odd thing it is to be a minister. So she's very, very smart.

But she's working in a department where I used to work as a civil servant. And of course, I'm aware that she doesn't know and is never going to know 95% of the things that are going on in that department. And so she's sharing her kind of big picture, this is my vision. And there are civil servants sitting around the table who are carefully trying to renegotiate that vision for the things that they're concerned about that day, which will be, you know, can we keep this staff in this field office or not? Can we redescribe them in terms of that? Can we get this bit of the budget through? And she can't see any of that. It doesn't know any of that.

Well, never. I never could work out even in 10 years really what this relationship was supposed to be. Because it's completely unlike the relationship that you would have running a company or a charity. You can't tell people what to do in a straightforward way and expect it to happen. It's a very odd dance. Did you ever get your head around what this thing is, how it works well, how it doesn't work, what the problems are with this whole Minister's Civil Servant thing? this is where I felt really lucky

you know so I had a brief insight into the different elements and parts that once you're a minister or a prime minister you're then you're then sitting over the top of so on the one hand I had been a political staffer within an office

and so understood the interface between an office very directly with a department I had also been on a contract that meant that I was part civil servant. I was a private secretary for energy per a time. And so got even closer to understanding the dynamics of a department in that relationship. And then, of course, was very lucky to have that short stint in the UK and the cabinet office. Which was really boring, right?

Do you know what I discovered about myself? And this is actually a really helpful thing when you're a politician. I can find almost anything interesting if I get into it with enough detail. So I was in the better regulation executive. Yeah. Well, we need better regulation. Of course, but not many people want to commit their lives to it, Alistair. Jacinda, I blame you.

You come and work in the cabinet office, and before you know, Tony Blair's out of office. I'm absolutely blaming you for the whole thing. Had nothing to do with me. I can assure you. That actually points to another issue when you're a minister or a prime minister is that you have to be a really good generalist. You have to learn to ask the right questions.

But you also have to foster an environment where those public servants who are sitting in front of you and are there to serve on behalf of New Zealand feel like they can tell you exactly what's happening. Now that's something really interesting when you hold, whether or not you're aware of it or not, you hold power and influence, and that without you even, before you even start,

will create an environment that people are operating and that you have to be aware of. So how do you create that space where you are going to get that honest reflection and advice because that's so important? Now, I think New Zealand has done a really good job of trying to protect the sanctity of free and frank advice and to encourage it in our public service. But I tried to be really good at picking up when I wasn't getting it. I remember during COVID, having a briefing call one day and just thinking, I just don't know if because of the dynamic on this call on this side, whether I'm getting everything. So after the meeting, I called one of the frontline public servants and said, just tell me what you think. And so perhaps being the leader of a

smaller country enables that, but that environment is so important. Because I think that's another really interesting question, which is this question of why civil servants don't always feel comfortable presenting the truth. Again, I saw another friend of mine who's a minister on Tuesday. Are you defecting to the Labour government, Roy? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We had Gordon Brown last week. We've got two ministers, and we saw Ed Miliband yesterday. Exactly. I'm defecting. So he was saying that one of the weird things, and I recognize this when I was in departments, is that you would spot a problem and you would tell the department that you wanted to, I don't know, shut down a particular part of the department or get rid of a particular program.

And the arguments that would be made back to you for keeping it open would seem absurd. I mean, sort of comical, and you'd be able to pick them all to pieces. So you'd think, I'm living in a crazy house. You know, how can they defend those? But what's really going on is they're not actually telling you, for whatever reason, the real reason, that they want to keep this thing going or keep this program running. And so they're in this very uncomfortable position of sort of acting like lawyers defending something in a way that seems to the minister, mad when it's not actually mad at all. But do you recognise that? And can you explain how this happens and why this happens? Here's probably where this manifests is the difference between me

actually being in. What is relatively unusual, the position of having been a prime minister without ever having been a minister. And so I sat a bit, you know, I sat slightly about that in so much as I would have perhaps a bit more of that experience where it related to the cabinet office and where I was directly, you know, had that responsibility for staffing and for funding. as it related to my department. But by and large, you don't have quite as much of that side of the interactions that you're describing, which would sit much more at a ministerial level. One thing I did notice, you do perhaps not quite the example that you gave,

but it's often hard to keep in mind the level of staffing required simply to ensure that you are receiving the very best advice and not just delivery. So you see on a page this number of policy leads or this number of policy offices and it's very easy to very crudely declare that that seems far more than is required. Without getting into whether or not that's a fair assumption,

what I have noticed is a pattern where progressive governments come in and they support a civil service to rebuild to the needs that are required to service a government and to deliver program. You then often flip to a conservative government and the first thing they'll do

start stripping away the public service. My observation is that our struggle, now Ezra Klein calls it this theory of abundance, I would just call it this issue of delivery. Our struggle to deliver on the needs of our constituents actually depends on having more stability, you know, on a political public service. And this yo-yoing effect that we're seeing,

which is often, unfortunately comes about from having this crude look at a grid on a page as to whether or not you've got too many people in a department is serving us poorly. And what we should fundamentally agree on is the need for a good solid core public service because it's in all of our interests. In a way, we keep coming back to the theme of kind of empathy and connection and so forth. I remember during COVID, I wrote a piece for the new European analyzing all the different world leaders' communications and media strategies through COVID.

Oh, I think I remember that. Well, you came top. It's probably why you remembered it. I thought your communication. So it probably showed it to me to make me feel better. I thought your communications was really outstanding. But you got a lot of grief because of some of the policy decisions. But this point about empathy is so important.

One of the really striking bits in the book I've found was when you were dealing with the Christchurch massacre, which must have been just, you know, and you tell story very well. You get a call from my friend and namesake, Andrew Campbell, who was your press guy, tells you what happened. And you're suddenly having to deal with this. And then you were getting all these messages of support from world leaders. And you had this wonderful conversation with Donald Trump in his first term. And Trump asked you if he could do anything to help. And you said, show sympathy and love for all Muslim communities. And, you know, I read that, if you like, in the context of what's happening in the United States today. And I just wonder whether you feel that Trump having been in

power, then out of power, now back in and showing the sort of politics that he is. Do you feel that your attempt to get more empathetic leadership is taking a bit of a knock right now? No. No. I think actually it's important now more than ever. And I'm not an isolated voice. You know, I know you would have watched as much as closely as I did, the election outcome in Canada with Mark Carney and in Australia with Anthony Albanese. And what I heard in two victory speeches on other sides of the world were both, both of these victorious candidates in their victory speeches on election night talked about the value of kindness.

and not just because it was a value that obviously was important to them, but because they were reflecting values that they believed were important to, in Albo's case, Australia and in Canada. And so I think what we're seeing at the moment is in some corners a disconnect from values that actually, by and large, still exist with voters. But some politicians have decided that there are obviously very real issues that voters are grappling with. you know, in Europe, in the United States, in actually most post-COVID economies,

I would distill it down to this idea of significant financial insecurity, that old perception that every, or belief, that every generation should be better off than the one before, and that has taken a backslide. We don't have that sense of certainty in this current era. And some politicians and leaders have decided that in response to that, they'll co-opt, as you'll know, Alistair, the easiest comms, trick in the book, fear and blame. Because the moment that you weaponize fear and blame in a political context, it's the moment that you actually apportion the problem to someone else, and it's not for you

to fix anymore. For you to fix it, you just need to marginalize that other person who's responsible, whether or not that's a migrant or a country who might be manufacturing, you know, some of the industries that you may have previously been a manufacturer. Either or, it's no longer your problem versus actually tackling at its core what we're facing, which is this deep period of uncertainty. So I think the challenge for progressive parties is to not misline the idea that voters are seeking combative politics and conflict-driven politics and the politics of fear, but rather what's sitting underneath it? That's the challenge. Just the thing that strikes me with Anthony Albanyzi and Mark Carney, both of whom we've

we've interviewed, and maybe to some extent, with Kirstammer as well, is that you have an increasingly fluent analysis of what's wrong from the progressive left, but it seems to me that the solutions, the policies, fall so far short, because these issues you're talking about insecurity are deeply rooted in our capitalist economies. I mean, this is part of the entire structure of our markets, and I didn't see anybody addressing these things. I mean, what are they doing? They're slightly changing taxation rates by one or two percent. There's a little bit more redistribution, a little bit more money in child poverty. But really dealing with a big issue, which is how have we gone from a world where somebody had a job for 30, 40 years to the kind of world we're in a,

I don't think anybody's doing it. I think what we've got is a progressive left that is failing to be radical. Well, I think we should also be clear. It isn't, you know, as you describe, it's, you know, no longer the environment where someone has the same career for 30, you know, 30. or 40 years. So I think having a bit of grace for us to acknowledge it is a very complicated landscape. But within that, and I won't give a policy prescription for any particular country here because there's nuance, obviously, in every jurisdiction. But I would say this. You know, Norman Kirk was this politician that existed in the 70s, you know, really well respected in the Labor movement for so many reasons. And I always had the sense that he was important

because he passed while he was in office, you know, long before I was born. I had a sense of he was important because our cat, when I was growing up, was named Norm after Norman Kirk. He had this saying that all that anyone ever really needs is somewhere to live, something to do, someone to love and something to hope for. Now, there's a lot in that that still remains to be true. In this environment where we have, you know, whether or not it's rapid technological development that might potentially make a whole range of industries redundant or change them significantly in an environment where trade and globalization has seen large cities and communities rocked by significant change. What are the fundamentals that we need to keep providing as progressors?

We need a strong safety net that should anyone fall in those harm times, they consider that to be not just a place where you survive, but you're able to retool. and move into new industry. You need an education system that allows lifelong learning and you need an accessible healthcare system. And of course, then you can look around the edges on those other really important fundamentals

like housing and so on. But I see at their core, those as being fundamentals for a highly unpredictable environment to give people that sense of security. And to varying degrees, we see a focus on that as progressives, but certainly while we were in office, and we weren't perfect by no means,

but certainly when we were in office and we set up under the leadership of Grant Robertson, the future of work. That was what we had our minds on. We can't predict the future, but we can better prepare for it. Jacinda, why did you give up in the end? Give up? Give up? Well, why did you step down?

You're not giving up. You're doing lots of different things now. But, you know, it was around the same time. Nicholas Sturgeon was stepping down. Angela Merkel was stepping down. And there was this sort of sense of, you know, very, very strong women leaders stepping down. And was it in the end? I mean, I read tons of stuff about the death threats you were getting and all the,

but in the end, what went through your mind to say, do you know what? I've had enough. I'm moving on. Yeah, on the personal thing, that wasn't my day-to-day experience. And I think, you know, maybe it helps to just hear that whenever I, you know, if there was a story about something like that, actually, often the first time I would hear of it would be, because a journalist had asked me a question. It wasn't something that filled my time, my space, my thinking, my mindset.

So it wasn't a driving force for my decision in any way. Did the social media stuff get you? I'm not going to trivialise it because I don't think we should brush over its existence or its impact. And the Global Institute for Women in Leadership and Julia Gillard, the unit out of Australia, has been doing a lot of work in this place. And they are finding that it's a barrier to women's entry into public life. So we should care about it and we should do something. think about it. But again, it wasn't a driving, driving influencer in my final decision. One thing that

strikes me is that the political environment, it is changing. And I asked Angela Merkel when she lived, how did you do 16 years? You know, it's phenomenal. How did you do that? And she did say it's different now. And it is different now. Not just the intensity of the crisis, you know, because I guess in our five years, we had March 15, a volcanic eruption, COVID. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It generally a fairly relentless environment. The one thing I've always really wanted to make clear, I was not burnt out. I could have kept going, but I did not believe I could keep going to the standard that I'd set myself. The traits that I valued, curiosity, not being defensive, which I think is very easy to become defensive, not being defensive, having enough in reserve

should another crisis arrive, those had eroded. They were eroding, I could feel it. And so that was a major driver for me. And Jacinda, why did those things erode? Because I think this is not unique to you. I mean, it's something I'm very struck by. I mean, you know, my friend William Hakes decided to step down as Foreign Secretary a year before he needed to. And a lot of people thought, you know, you're mad.

You're the British Foreign Secretary. Why would you not want to keep doing that? And I remember Cameron's chief of staff and had a strategy leaving and everyone thought, well, How could you do this? You're in the most exciting, important job in the world. What is it about these jobs that drains curiosity, that the spare fuel in the tank produces defensiveness? I think for the first of the thing, though, I think it's really interesting to reflect on people's perception when you choose to walk away from those. And I think that in itself points to a disconnect, that we have a perception that people are often in these roles are there because, or, are sustained in those roles or choose to remain because of the personal gratification and the power

when actually so many people are there because they have a sense of civic responsibility, they see themselves as a public servant and they feel a deep responsibility. And if you feel that, then that actually will be the thing that causes you to constantly assess whether you're still the right person for the job, that sense of responsibility. And so what eroded some of those traits that I thought were important, time and crisis? But also by then, I mean, the book starts with you, you know, at the height of the election, discovering that you're pregnant. Yes. Even worse than that, we're in the middle of coalition negotiations. Exactly. You're about to put it through, yeah. So you're waiting to hear whether you're going to be prime minister and you discover you're pregnant and you have.

a daughter, Neve. I do want to talk about that a little bit. But first of all, I told you I don't do God. I also don't do the honour system. I was a bit hurt that you took a Damewood. But anyway, we'll put that to one side. This is the second time you've expressed this disappointment of me, Alistair. I feel it deeply.

I've found a line in the book, however, where I think you could be stripped of your damehood because you directly quote advice from Her Majesty the Queen. I don't know about New Zealand prime ministers, but British prime ministers must not quote directly. So no, no, no. May I just hear explain that I, at the time that Her Majesty passed and a number of questions were then asked of me about my reflection on Her Majesty. The advice I received from the Cabinet Office, and it was verbal, I will acknowledge it wasn't written, was that, you know, within certain parameters on her passing, it would be okay to show.

Appropriate. Be appropriate. Okay. Well, right. Well, the advice, just for our listeners, spoiler alert. There's no constitutional crisis. Just for our listeners, the advice that the Queen gave is when you were about to have a baby and you asked the Queen how she coat with being in public life but raising children, as she said, you just get on with it. Very queenly. It was very British. Tell us about me, because there is some really interesting So on the one hand, and I think Rory and I both identify with this with, you know, doing high profile, high pressure jobs and having young children. And, you know, I think about this a lot. And you have a conversation with me when you're in the job where she's basically saying,

why do you have to work so hard and you try to explain to her? And then when you leave the job and you say that this is great because you'll be able to spend more time together and so forth. But then she says to you, but you always taught me. not to run away from things. Yeah, her words were about, Mommy, we should never give up. Never give up, yeah. But the thing that was so, such a gift from that conversation with my wonderful, insightful at that time, not quite, I think she was just, yeah, she was five.

But the gift of that conversation was for all the worry that I had carried, that I wasn't present enough, that I was, you know, that obviously my job was, had to be a priority, had to be, you know, that she might perceive that as feeling secondary, therefore, and yet by asking this simple statement, but, Mommy, we should never give up, told me that wasn't how she saw my job at all. You know, it wasn't that she saw I was, I wasn't focused on her. She understood somehow the importance of it and just reframed entirely for me. And it made me realize how much as parents were, we assume the perspective of our kids.

We assume that, of course, the disappointment of our absence. And that's not to say that they won't find it hard, but I think are complex beings, and there will be a lot often going on when they perceive our roles in the world. In fact, I wrote a children's book based on some of the insights she used to share because they were just, you know,

some of the things that she would say, before she realized really what my job was, because we never sat it down and explained it to her. Some of those insights were such gems for me that I wrote a book. They're essentially based on her observations. Yeah, it's just schoolgirl error there. Don't promote a previous book when you're on the trail promoting the car.

No, this one hasn't come out. It comes out on 30th of September. Thank you for the opportunity to plug it, though. Well done. So you've got two books coming out. a matter of... So what have... That's an error as well.

You've got to have the hardback than the paperback. Well, no, there's three months between them. Oh, okay. Yeah, I can't say I have no expert in the publishing world. I cannot tell you if this is a good thing. Do you see yourself now as being based in the United States? No. New Zealand's still your home?

Absolutely. We're on a temporary adventure. Right. New Zealand will always be home. What is it like being in America at the moment? Because I'm sort of towing with the idea of... not going there for four years. One thing I will say, when it's your own politics, it's deeply personal.

So there is a difference to being an observer. That doesn't mean that I don't feel things deeply, you know, as a progressive in the world. Of course, you do. But I do feel that I am an observer here. And for me, all of those observations I've reflected in this call, just the importance now of talking about the alternatives in leadership and in politics. and even, you know, one thing I often draw on this data point that post the European elections data prexis did some research

that looked at the shift towards populist parties and found that less than a quarter of voters who switched their votes to populist parties primarily did so because of policy. And so, again, I'm loath to just see everything that we're seeing currently in the political realm as being as simplistic as simply a narrative about ideologically where every voter is. I think it's much more complicated than that.

And certainly in the US you get that inside of. There's so many things going on here. One thing struck me about the book is that you are wonderfully frank and open about yourself and your family. But you're surprisingly coy about describing other leaders. Yeah. So on the tone of the whole thing, I was expecting to suddenly, I got pressed on that. Yeah, I did get pressed on that. You know, editors wanted more on that as well. So that's a fair observation. Let me give you a chance. Who really impressed you or depressed you?

And what did you pick up looking at other people about what you felt made for a good political leader? You know, there are, you know, Alice is referred to kind of the practice and what you convey and don't convey around interactions with the royal family. And there's those same protocols exist with your engagement. with other leaders. Very few of them obey them when they write their memoirs. No, that's right. But, you know, I have such respect for the office that you hold when your prime minister. It's a gift. There are certain rules that apply. And I didn't want to just leave and abandon kind of my sense of integrity around the role. And so that was, that was it for me. But just underline Rory's point there, for example, what you just told us about that conversation

with Angela Merkel, that would have fitted perfectly in the bit where you write about Angela Merkel. Right, Theresa May, I think she's mentioned once, and I think basically you mentioned that you had a phone call. So tell us what you think about Theresa May. I talk about Teresa in the context of trade, but on Merkel, I do give reflections on Merkel. A little bit.

Yeah, but I mean, you know, I guess certain, you know, there's certain audiences for lots of different things, and the political audience will be probably really interested in that, and others will be interested in other things. So you're trying to serve a bunch of different readers. Maybe you should call it a different kind of memoir. I knew that I was doing that. Do you know in part because when I was first asked whether I would write a book, my answer was no.

And that's because in my mind, a political memoir was so often, whether you intend for them to be or not, they are reframed as being defensive and you writing your account of history. And again, whether you intend to do that or not, that's how often how they're perceived. I didn't want to do that. I felt like my record was there, and it would be for others to determine where they land on that.

But then someone raised with me this question, what if you wrote the book about your journey there and what it feels like to lead, particularly from the perspective of someone who did not believe they should be there? So that's a very different memoir. And maybe it means you get a little bit less of what you were looking for. And it gives you the chance to write another one in a few years' time. Well done. Good thinking. It feels like I went down the wrong path trying to get you to tell us what she thought about Theresa Mayer, Michael or Donald Trump.

Distracted. This is what makes you such a wonderful politician with such charm and while. You managed to sort of avoid the question entirely. So I'll take it as red. You're not going to tell us. So let me finish with my final question. Listen, one of the most dramatic things about you, Descinda, is that you were for a moment the pinup of the world. I mean, you were the great hope. I'd be interesting how it felt.

I mean, for very young listeners, for whom we have some, I was talking to a 14-year-old today, may not remember. But there was a moment where every time I gave a speech anywhere in the world, people would say, oh, it all seems really rubbish. There's no good leaders out there. Who is there? And I would say, Justinda Arden and everyone would clap, right? I feel like I've somehow ruined something for you.

I don't know if that's your intention, but I feel like that's where this is going to finish. No, it's not where it's going. It's not where it's going. It is ghost's question of imposter syndrome. And how does it feel to be put that much on a pedestal? What does it actually feel like as an individual for people all the way around the world who don't know very much about you to see you as the salvation of humanity? I remember at a very, you know, at a very personal level, being in the debating chamber one day, I can't actually remember where I was, whether I was deputy leader or even whether I'd become leader. But there's been a poll out. that show on that my personal ratings had risen. And a member of the opposition, quite a senior member of the opposing party, came over to me and he said, congratulations on the poll. And he said, but always remember, what goes up must come down.

And, you know, his implication being, of course, that there's an inevitability in politics. And I had been around politics long enough to know, you know, for all the, coming back to that idea of the mania that actually behind all of the, that behind the headlines, it was just the reality of the job that I had to do. And that within that, I might retain popularity or I might not. Ultimately, the value that that served was it put me in the position to do something useful. And sometimes I would spend it on things that would erode my popularity. But it was always about doing something useful.

So in large part, you would have to block out that expectation. I would not receive weekly polls. I had a policy of telling my chief of staff, do not tell me the polling numbers. Tell me what the focus groups are saying. Tell me what's happening in people's lives. Tell me about whether or not they heard a particular message on a policy, whether we're doing that, or well, but do not tell me the polls because I didn't want to govern that way. And so in the same way, I really blocked out some of the, as you would describe, the people pinning hope to you. Yeah.

Yeah, Desinda, my last question, I normally ask a sort of, you know, really trivial and comical question to end, but I'm going to ask a real difficult and serious question. I don't want any political bullshit. I want this straight answer to this. Not that I do that anyway. I know you don't. I know you don't. And it's similar to a question that we asked Anthony Albanese. So New Zealand today put in order of ranking which of these relationships matters most.

USA, China, UK, European Union. It's a terrible question. It's a great question, and the reason is because you don't want to answer it. No, it's because the problem with this world is the binary thinking that you have just put to me. And the idea that in foreign policy, it's a with us against us. It is fundamentally the problem with foreign policy currently in this world. That's another brilliant deflection. It's not a deflection, it's the truth, if I may, a small hobby horse of my world.

you know, particularly as a member of the Five Eyes, you know, we would often just call for sometimes the nuance that's required in all of these relationships. But the moment that you might try and add that, it was seen as either that was a pro-China stance or too much of an anti-U.S. stance. It had, and that binary thinking in foreign policy is a disservice and hugely problematic. That's not binary. I'm giving you four. But China's more important than it used to be. And China's, New Zealand's probably the most pro-China of the Five Eyes, isn't it? I think it has a bit more nuanced to it, a pragmatism. But not without values. And so, if I may, New Zealand's, I would say, most important relationship is Australia. Ultimately, they are a

most important relationship, fundamentally. If you look at economic ties, China then, obviously, on paper, China, economically, hugely important. But the idea that just because we have a hugely important economic relationship does not mean that we will not call out human rights issues, that we will not call out aggression in, say, the South China Sea, that we will not call on them to call out Russia's behavior and the threat to sovereign, you know, territorial sovereignty. It is not the case that simply because you have a strong economic relationship does not mean that you will not act based on your values. And nor does it mean that you can't have a close relationship with the United States or the UK. So that's my problem with that question. Binary thinking. It was a brilliant answer.

It was a brilliant answer, wasn't you? That's the true. It was amazing. She's incredible. Absolutely incredible. Justina, that's why I was right to say that you were the one. That's your way of saying that you think they're in absolute pain. The one hope of the world.

Which do you prefer Scotland or England? Well, I'm Scottish. Yeah, I know. But just say Scotland then. You don't actually qualified. Why just said? What did I just say that? I'm Scottish.

He said love Scottish. He can't ask that of someone who's Scottish. I've run out of stupid questions. Just into the last one for me, gone then, real last one. What do you, in these interviews and when you're interacting with people, what do you get frustrated that people don't ask you? What do you wish you could communicate? What do you find irritating about these formats and what you wish you could get across?

I get asked almost everything, and I'm okay with that. I think that ultimately you can't build a conversation or at least you can't build trust and confidence in a conversation unless we're a bit more open. And we should have a bit more faith in voters. We expose a few more tragic flaws with politicians. They already know they're there. Why don't we talk about them a bit more often? I think the thing that I struggle with is often not what I don't get asked,

but what I sometimes struggle to articulate. And that is that in everything, I maintain the sense of optimism, and that's sometimes unfortunately perceived as naivety. I don't think you can run a country and be naive to the realities of, you know, everything, the economic struggles, the national security. challenges, the foreign policy travel challenges. So what I hope I can convey is that coming from the point of, you know, being a realist, I've been in the position where I've had to be, I'm still an optimist, because optimism is also about expectation and I will always expect

better of our leaders and of what we're capable of. So my frustration is that if I ever can't, if I leave without leading, leaving that sense that we should be, we should maintain a sense of optimism. That's what I hope for. Well, just saying, it's been lovely to talk to you Zah, and thank you for promoting New Zealand so wonderfully. I can't let you go, though, without saying that my main experience of New Zealand was the 2005 British and Irish Lions Tour, and I'm sorry, it was a spear tackle on Brian O'Driscoll. You should have had two players sent off, and I'm not quite over it yet, okay? But you also had a great time. I came to watch you on conversation, and it was great. I still

remember it. It was absolutely great. I know you love New Zealand. But it was a spear tackle. It was a spear tackle. See you later. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Sorry, in case our listeners didn't know, I loved Jacinda. Clearly. And just tell us a little bit about the when you first met her and how well do you know her and what's the deal here? Well, I've forgotten that I did meet her in 2005 when she came to this. I was doing when I was on the British and Irish Lions tour, one of the more curious past elements of my life. And Clive Woodward, the coach asked me to do the comms. And so while I was there, I did some political events and Q&A.

And she came to one of them because she just, yeah, I think she just left the job in the cabin office, so she came to one. So that was probably the first time of met her. And back then, I don't think the reason why I was talking about this reluctant politician, she's obviously incredibly political and got real sort of, you know, as she said, political drive. But I don't think I thought she was sort of set on this amazing political career that she subsequently had. And I think a lot, you know, I mentioned her dad and other members of a family and friends and colleagues who sometimes just thought, you know, she didn't have the sharp elbows, didn't have the kind of, you know, the toughness that we think you need for politics.

But actually, she's got these other qualities. She is actually quite tough, I think. But she's got these other qualities that I think she brought to bed. I think it is a tragedy that she went when she did. And, you know, I think she's, you know, she's only 44, you know. It was very interesting the way that she describes it. So she said it's not that I think that I had a breakdown, but that I was beginning to lose my, well, the spare petrol on the tank,

I'm losing the ability to listen, losing sense of curiosity. I mean, it does sound as though. That's one way of saying she was coming under more and more nervous. strain, that she felt less and less able to, well, I think that's what she said, didn't she, that she, somebody who believes profoundly in public service and felt that she just wasn't going to be able to serve in the way that she wanted. Yeah, but also this point she made about the defensiveness, I think, was coming from the relentlessness of the attack.

I mean, Darren Hughes, who now runs the Electoral Reform Society here, who's a very, very close friend of Jacinders and who I know quite well. And I remember the time he was saying to me, and I think I told you, do you remember when I told you that she was getting the second most organized online disinformation stuff from Russia? Macron was number one and she was number two. Because as you say, she was this kind of progressive political pinup. Now, I'm not saying that's why she went, but I think that that sense of it is what was making her more defensive than she clearly wanted to be. And you can see in the way that she communicates now that she's just got this amazing sort of optimism and sort of vibrancy and freshness. So, yeah, I think she's great.

I think she's a huge loss. But, you know, she's doing lots of different things now. We've done a number of interviews with people who I think are skirting around this issue of just how painful it can be. I mean, Theresa May, I think, frankly, it must have been an absolutely brutal two and a half years. Anglam Merkel, I think, is different, isn't she? I mean, it's not just it was a different time. She's a different type of person. And there was an added thing I would have said, which is she was saying when I was talking about, you know, people saying, why don't you stay, that people imagine they're just in it for the power.

Unfortunately, it's even worse than that. It's because people pin so much hope on them and see it so much in terms of public service, not power, that they're so, they put them under so much pressure to, stay and are so distraught when they leave. And it's funny, when I don't think, I think it was when we were off air when she said that when she wrote the book, she said to Darren, I don't think Alice is going to like this book because it's more about the emotions and less polities. But actually, that's what I did enjoy about the book, is actually, it is about a kind of emotional family journey.

And I think the book will do well. I really do. Final thing for me, I thought incredibly powerful, that idea that what people want is a, as a house, a job, someone to love and something. to hope for. And there's some, there's a real wisdom there. Yeah. It was beautiful. Brilliant. Really beautiful. And of course, that's why housing and the failure on housing in all our countries has been so central to a lot of our problems. Anyway, much love. See you take care. Bye-bye.