Iron Ladies show their mettle
Publishers have never under-estimated the appeal of prime ministerial memoirs, particularly if they are female.
A primary example is Margaret Thatcher, a conviction politician who revelled in her reputation as the ''Iron Lady' who resisted any concession to communism. In fact, the epithet was first used in a Soviet newspaper in 1977.
Thatcher pursued radical economic reforms and fought the Falklands War. She was tough on her cabinet colleagues and was 'not for turning' once she had decided on a course of action.
As a woman, she was also judged for her emotional quotient, being reduced to tears on occasions of national and personal tragedy, while showing courage after an Irish bombing attempt on her life.
Yet her period in power ended badly and Thatcherism is still a catchcry on the left for all of Britain's economic and other ills.
Margaret Thatcher, by Iain Dale.
A new biography, Margaret Thatcher, by Iain Dale, has just appeared, aimed at a new generation who were born after she left office in November 1990. Dale says he isn't trying to replace Charles Moore's magisterial three-volume biography or the dozens of others on her 11 and a half years as prime minister.
Rather, it was to explain those 'basking in the glory of her achievements, or formed in the shadow of her failures … [and] to bust the many myths that have grown up about her'.
Future task
That will also be the future task for political scientists and historians studying the phenomenon of Dame Jacinda Ardern, the third of New Zealand's female prime ministers.
Her autobiography, A Different Kind of Power, was launched globally this week, in the same way as books by the Clintons and the Obamas. The world's largest publisher, German-owned Penguin Random House, specialises in getting returns from million-dollar-plus advances.
It must be emphasised, despite the widespread publicity about the strengths and weaknesses of its insights into the local political scene, New Zealanders are not the book's primary audience.
Instead, it has been honed by a gifted communicator, aided by skilful editors and marketers, as an inspirational story about a woman's rise to international celebrity status and empathetic power from humble beginnings.
It's mainly a human drama with strong emotional content, sufficient doses of levity to keep you reading, and an uplifting message of self-help if you want it. Most book buyers are women, and many of them want to read a true-life story of someone who aspired to make the world a better place, while also raising a family.
The Ardern story is hard to beat in ticking those boxes. Two-thirds of the book is devoted to her rise to fame and overcoming the mental doubts of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and inferiority complex.
Early childhood
It starts with an early childhood growing up in a gang-infested forestry town, Murupara, that would rate among this country's worst. Young Jacinda and her older sister, Louise, had to be removed from the local school because of bullying.
Her hard-working parents moved on to dairying and orcharding in Waikato to supplement their incomes (her father was in the Police). They were unusual among other Kiwi families because of their Mormon religion, which emphasised family values and women's roles as mothers. They spurned caffeine and alcohol. (Mormon families are also required to have three months' supply of food, we learn.)
The outside world penetrated this life only through the six o'clock news. The Lockerbie bombing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tanks in Tiananmen Square, and Nelson Mandela walking free from prison all made their mark on young Jacinda. She writes, in italics: 'The world is so big and life could be fragile, I understood. But not so big that one person can't do something to change it.'
Anecdotes abound through life in high school and university, as the 'political' Ardern takes shape through organising youth events, debating, and culminating in helping to run an election campaign for Harry Duynhoven, Labour MP for New Plymouth.
You can almost hear the intervention of an editor as Ardern is prompted, 'Tell us more about this and that.' She kept a diary, so readers learn about the boy who robbed the fish-and-chip shop where she worked, later turning up at a party that night; the tragic account of a teenage suicide; an heirloom violin that was lost in a swindle; a long-buried family secret; and, in a longshot coincidence, a boy from Murupara who played with the Ardern girls later turning up as a drag queen in Wellington.
Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark, posted on Clark's X feed.
Rapid rise
As they say, you can't make this stuff up. The Duynhoven campaigning was followed by an internship in Parliament and a rapid rise to working in Helen Clark's Office of the Prime Minister. Only in New Zealand, overseas readers might wonder, could a 20-something be so quickly employed by the country's most powerful politician.
This closeness to power proves too intoxicating. A brief interlude follows of an OE in London. Older sister Louise is already there, and Labour connections provide a public servant job advising on policy for Tony Blair.
A single reference is made to the International Union of Socialist Youth, where at 27, Ardern was elected unopposed as president for a two-year term at the world congress in the Dominican Republic in 2008. This should be big news but only her opportunity for travel is recorded.
Nothing is said about these travels to places such as Hungary, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, and China. That editor must have signalled – 'don't bother with the political stuff'. (IUSY has 122 leftwing, non-communist member organisations from more than 100 countries.)
The story moves back to New Zealand as Ardern's political career takes off, landing her 20th on the Labour list of candidates in the 2008 election, which Labour lost. She begins her parliamentary career in opposition, but that nosey editor ensures the boring stuff is left out.
The focus remains on the personal as the young politician begins dating on advice that she should have a life outside politics. Readers are introduced to the alpha male Clarke Gayford, who has a higher profile as a broadcasting personality. That changes when Andrew Little steps aside as leader and Ardern, deputy for just five months, is elevated just weeks before the 2017 general election.
Clarke Gayford, Jacinda Ardern, and baby Neve at the United Nations.
Worlds collide
The couple's desire for a family becomes paramount and the two worlds collide in a dramatic climax as Ardern learns she is pregnant on election night after years of failed fertility treatments. Again, you can't make this stuff up.
As coalition negotiations start on the formation of a Labour-New Zealand First Government, Ardern is chomping on water biscuits and salt-and-vinegar chips to stave off bouts of morning sickness.
Amazingly, her pregnancy remains secret from her colleagues and the Diplomatic Protection Service, who do not twig when they drop the couple off to a medical appointment, thinking they are calling on a friend with a bottle of wine.
The birth of baby Neve in June 2018 and the beginnings of motherhood are given as much prominence as other early milestones of the prime ministership. The visit to the annual United Nations annual leaders' meeting is a logistical nightmare if you are a breastfeeding mum, and Neve makes history as the first baby to appear on the UN General Assembly floor.
We are reminded of the editor's presence as a teenage infatuation with the 'Peace Train' song by Cat Stevens contributes another flukey coincidence – the appearance of Yusuf Islam at the We Are One memorial concert for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
Only four brief chapters, out of 30, are left to cover subsequent events, including the most contentious period of Ardern's term as prime minister. This has disappointed reviewers, who note the lack of references to issues that saw a sharp drop in support for the Government after Labour's 2020 election win that produced the first single-party majority under MMP.
It comes as a surprise, in the memoir's final melodramatic reveal, that the resignation announcement on January 19, 2023, was partly caused by a cancer scare rather than not having 'enough fuel in the tank' to continue the onerous duties of public leadership and raising a family.
A Different Kind of Power: A memoir, by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin).
Nevil Gibson is a former editor at large for NBR. He has contributed film and book reviews to various publications.
This is supplied content and not paid for by NBR.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
13 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Councillor denies privacy breach
The West Coast Regional Council is alleging a privacy breach involving its former chairman after correspondence from a mining company ended up in the media. However, Cr Allan Birchfield, who openly admits passing the information on, denies there was any breach. If the council wanted to take issue with it — "bring it on". The council released a statement this week, and although it did not directly refer to Cr Birchfield, it took issue with the release of the correspondence from Chinese-owned Westcoast Mining Ltd shared with "some councillors". The correspondence complained about a two-year delay in their resource consent application, and being ordered by regional council staff to shut down mining operations in the meantime. Council chairman Peter Haddock said in a statement Westcoast Mining Ltd had "confirmed it did not share" its correspondence to the council with anyone else. "Nor did it give permission for any of its information to be shared," Cr Haddock said. Rather, the letter had been shared "confidentially" with some councillors. "It's very disappointing privacy between [the] council and the company has been breached ... We will be taking measures to deal with this transgression." Cr Birchfield said yesterday he took "full credit" for passing on the information because it concerned council activities in the public domain. "They're wrong. That letter was written to all the councillors, and I take full credit for releasing it," he said. "The public should know the mining community do know what is going on [with the council]." He said the correspondence would be otherwise discoverable anyway through the Local Government and Official Information and Meetings Act. The allegations outlined by Westcoast Mining were "symptomatic" of wide disquiet in the West Coast community about the changing council approach to consenting and compliance, Cr Birchfield said. It not only reflected the growing concern within the West Coast mining fraternity but from other industry sectors seeking routine consents and now being presented with new hurdles. Cr Birchfield said the information being sought officially now often reflected no West Coast mining knowledge or local knowledge at all. "I'm being barraged with complaints from the industry and I'm sick of it. "I released that letter because it's not private," Cr Birchfield said. Cr Brett Cummings, who chairs the Resource Management Committee, was surprised at the council stance but preferred not to comment publicly. He was already awaiting further information on "concerns with the consenting process" he had raised. Cr Peter Ewen, who has regularly sparred with Cr Birchfield, described the release of the correspondence as "grandstanding" and "attention seeking". He said Cr Birchfield knew "full well" the rules about information disclosure. Given it was apparently yet to be tabled at the council meeting he was "jumping the gun". "I think attention-seeking councillors are doing it all the time — that's the problem," Cr Ewen said. "There's a right and a wrong way to do it. He knows that ... there's an election coming." Cr Ewen said there was also some irony in that Cr Birchfield, a gold miner, had not always declared his own mining activities at the council table. "He can't even follow the rules himself." Cr Haddock said Westcoast Mining Ltd had been mining without a resource consent when it was shut down on May 31. "It was clear the resource consent was yet to be issued as a company representative visited the WCRC office on May 16 ... to request alterations to their [application]. "We will not be commenting further while the matter is under investigation," Cr Haddock said. — Greymouth Star
Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Emerging theological emergency for churches, with global ramifications
The faithful cannot be silent in the face of distortion Graham Redding writes. In moments of deep national and spiritual crisis, churches have sometimes found the courage to speak with clarity and conviction. Not with platitudes or party dogma, but with public confessions — declarations that reclaim the Gospel from the grip of ideology and idolatry. In 1934, in the shadow of Nazi Germany, a group of German pastors and theologians crafted the Barmen Declaration. It was a bold theological stand against the co-opting of the German Church by Adolf Hitler's regime. While many churches willingly aligned themselves with the state — some even blending the cross with the swastika — Barmen drew a line. It rejected the false gospel of nationalism and racial superiority. It reasserted the lordship of Christ and the authority of Scripture against a corrupted and politicised church. Fifty years later, in apartheid-era South Africa, the Belhar Confession emerged. Under a system of brutal racial segregation and violence — one that was theologically defended by the powerful Dutch Reformed Church — Belhar became both a protest and a promise. It condemned injustice in the name of Christ and called the Church back to its foundation in unity, reconciliation and justice. It insisted that these are not optional ideals but core expressions of the Gospel. What Barmen and Belhar shared was a willingness to speak truth into situations of injustice, where the name of Jesus was being used to bless what the Gospel condemns. They did not pretend to be universally true for all times and places. They were contextual, prophetic responses to specific crises — resisting theological distortion and political manipulation. Is it time for churches in the United States to unite to do something similar? Many are sounding the alarm that a major crisis is unfolding in the United States today. Political platforms are draped in religious language. Christian politicians are among the most vocal defenders of exclusionary policies. Christian vocabulary is used to justify everything from white nationalism to the erosion of human rights. In some quarters, the Church has not merely been silent in the face of these distortions — it has become complicit. This is more than a political problem. It is a theological emergency with global ramifications. When faith is harnessed to serve partisan power, when the name of Jesus is used to endorse ideological and political agendas, the Church must speak — not to defend its reputation, but to defend the Gospel itself. What is needed is not a philosophical treatise but a courageous declaration that says: this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is what we reject. A confession that names the idolatries of our time — Christian nationalism, systemic racism, xenophobia, political authoritarianism — and says clearly: this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Such a confession would begin with repentance. It would acknowledge where churches have failed to be faithful: where they have preferred influence over integrity and confused discipleship with dominance. It would reaffirm Christ's lordship over every other loyalty, and declare that justice, mercy and humility are not liberal or conservative values — they are Gospel imperatives. It would not speak for every Christian. It would not demand uniformity. Like Barmen and Belhar, it would arise from communities of conscience — those who can no longer be silent in the face of distortion. It would face opposition and criticism. Barmen and Belhar both drew backlash. But both also offered the Church something priceless: integrity. A way to be faithful in the public square without surrendering the soul of the Gospel. The danger today for churches is not one of persecution but seduction. The seductive pull of power and cultural dominance is nothing new. But the longer churches confuse proximity to power with spiritual authority, the more urgently they need to confess what the Gospel actually is — and what it is not. A confession of faith would not fix everything, but it would be a clarion call, an act of clarity in a time of confusion, an act of courage in a time of compromise. And it would be an invitation — to return to the source, to rediscover the deep well of God's justice, grace and love. Because at the heart of the Christian faith is not a political ideology or a cultural identity. It is a crucified and risen saviour who calls his followers not to rule, but to serve. Not to dominate, but to love. Not to blend in, but to bear witness. Maybe it's time to say that again. Loudly and clearly. If American churches were to come together for that purpose, there would be strong global support — for a Gospel no longer bound by empire, but set free again for justice, mercy and truth, and for a nation that is less preoccupied with its own greatness and more dedicated to the flourishing of all nations, the healing of creation and the ways of peace. ■Graham Redding is a lecturer in chaplaincy studies at the University of Otago.
Scoop
3 days ago
- Scoop
America's Imperial 'Gift': 'Crusader Democracy' Versus 'Christian Nationalism'
The United States has always fancied itself as the founder of modern democracy (aka 'Democracy'). And, although that country has been self-absorbed for most of its history, it has always sensed that Democracy was its greatest export. 'America' became involved in Africa and the 'Middle East' very early in its history. There was the American–Algerian War (1785–1795); and the Barbary Wars (1801-1805,1815), featuring the heroic re-seizure and scuttling by fire of the USS Philadelphia in Tripoli Harbor in 1804. Then there was the reverse colonisation (aka 'liberation', 'democratization') of a small corner of Africa from 1822, leading to Liberia's independence in 1862. In the 1846, there was the small matter of the United States' invasion of Mexico, resulting in the 1848 annexation of half of Mexico's territory. 'America' brought Democracy to California, through annexation. And, in 1898, the United States appropriated Spain's remaining worldwide empire, including the Philippines. And some other territories, including Hawaii. Upon his inauguration as the 47th President, Donald Trump explicitly invoked the memory of President William McKinley, America's most notorious annexor of foreign territory. And in 1889: "Three American warships then entered the Apia harbor and prepared to engage the three German warships found there. Before any shots were fired, a typhoon wrecked both the American and German ships." After ten years of military/political stalemate – known as the Second Samoan Civil War – the Samoan 'assets' were split between the United States, the German Second Reich, and the United Kingdom. (The UK traded its share with Germany. Britain gave up all claims to Samoa and in return accepted the termination of German rights in Tonga, certain areas in the Solomon Islands, and Zanzibar.) America's imperial 'burden' in the last 125 years Rudyard Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden was written in 1899; "a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country". America's empire today is partly formal, though mostly informal, with various grades of informality. Indeed, the recent acknowledgement by the European Union that it has free-ridden on the United States for its defence indicates that the United States has had a significant degree of imperial control over Europe; hegemony manifesting as control over foreign policy. The name 'America' itself is an imperial grab. America is the name for two continents, yet even the Canadians call the United States 'America', and its citizens 'Americans'. American exceptionalism represents the weaponisation of democracy. Democracy is packaged as 'Democracy', a secular faith like 'Communism' or 'Economic Liberalism'; a faith which must be proselytised, spread across the world as some kind of holy or secular crusade. The remaining territories on the 'autocratic' 'Dark Side' – ie territories not subject to United States' 'protection' – are mainly in continental Asia: especially West Asia (much of which is imperialistically called the 'Middle East', which extends to North Africa), North Asia, and East Asia. Though there is also very much a contest for South Asia; a contest, which if successful for the White Man's force, will bring secular Hindi along with secular Judaism fully into the imperial fold of secular Christianity. (We note that the labels Hindu and Jew have long been name-tags which confuse and conflate religion with ethnicity. So it may soon be with Christianity; with top-tier Christians behaving very much as top-tier Jews behave today, as supremacist gift-givers and bomb-throwers.) We should note that Catholic Christianity is now uneasy about this crusader culture, having been the main perpetrator of such culture nearly a millennium ago. And Orthodox Christianity is even more uneasy. In its North Asian (ie Russian) form, Orthodox Christianity – like Islam, and Chinese atheist capitalism – is a target of the present Christian Soldiers, not a collaborator. (The decline of the Christian East came with the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Ostensibly a western invasion force going to re-recover the 'Holy Land', instead that Crusade turned on Orthodox Christian Constantinople. The result was a weak Latin empire in the east; easy prey for the Ottoman forces which in 1453 created a Muslim empire in West Asia and Southeast Europe; an empire that lasted until 1918.) The modern American-led crusading mentality represents a schism of Protestant Evangelism (which dates back in particular to the Calvinist side of the sixteenth century Reformation) and Secular Liberalism. Protestant Evangelism (increasingly known today as Christian Nationalism) is the imperial currency of today's Republican Party, whereas Secular Liberalism is the imperial currency of today's Democratic Party (although secular Neoliberalism is presently teaming up with the Evangelists). What both have in common is a will to impose themselves upon the rest of the world. And to produce and export lots of big guns, military hardware; making money, and making American jobs. There are some strange bedfellows. As these two American socio-cultural Gods – Republican and Democrat; protagonist and antagonist, and vice versa – have battled out their Americanisms on a world stage, we have seen a significant posse of very rich devout Economic Liberals taking the side of the Christian Nationalists. So do a number of working-class and other disempowered former ballot-box 'Leftists', who wish to cast an anti-establishment vote but don't know which way to turn. This dabbling with new right-radicalism (not unlike leftist dabbling in New Zealand in 1984 with the recently late Bob Jones' New Zealand Party) follows the slow but comprehensive gutting of the Left-project that was so buoyant in the 1960s and 1970s. The name Christian Nationalism is a misnomer; a better name is Christian Extranationalism. Rather than being an internationalist movement – internationalism is a liberal concept – this is a movement to perpetuate and extend the global domination of American culture, through imperial merchant capitalism. The United States was born out of British merchant capitalism (and New York out of Dutch merchant capitalism); its values and institutions reflect those of eighteenth-century western Europe. Just as the British exacted tribute from their American colonies; imperial America seeks to extract tribute through the 'negotiation' of asymmetric 'deals'. Are we today witnessing an American Napoleon? Money, Lies and God: by Katherine Stewart (2025) Katherine Stewart this year has written about the new eclectic rightwing coalition in the United States that is coalescing under the name of Christian Nationalism. Though I've only read the introduction so far, the book has a real strength, in particular in identifying five components of this new new-right coalition: funders, thinkers, sergeants, infantry, power-players. Of particular interest to me is the "out-sourced" relationship between the funders and the thinkers. While Stewart emphasises the 'thinkers' in the well-funded (and mostly conservative) 'Think Tanks', the real issue is that of 'selective truth', in the Darwinian sense of 'selection'. Our 'intellectual' careerists compete to publish 'truths', and the truths which prevail will be the truths purchased by the 'funders', given that the funders have most of the funds. This kind of relationship with truth is somewhat like a 'court-of-law', where commonly two 'truths' are subject to a contest in which one will be declared 'the winner'. Not uncommonly, both rival 'truths' are at least partially false, and there may be other (possibly truer) truths that are not even 'on the table'. Evidence represents a part of the court process, but by no means the whole of that process. The truth-relationship between the funders and thinkers is a corrupt form of the 'law court' model; the more corrupt the more wealth the conservative funders control. Academic careers – indeed scientists' careers – are built on perpetuating narratives acceptable to their patrons. While Money, Lies and God represents a prescient and useful analysis, ultimately it is part of the problem. It represents one side of the great American divide calling out the other side. The process of belligerent finger-pointing – between, in American language, 'liberals' and 'conservatives' – is the bigger problem. Why bother talking about the world when you can talk about half of America instead? Indeed, too many American intellectuals talk and write about the United States as if America is the World; a kind of mental imperialism. (Another critique of American 'Christian Nationalism' can be found in a recent Upfront episode on Al Jazeera: The growing influence of Christian Nationalism and Christian Zionism in the United States.) The problem of American imperialism belongs to both sides of the Divide; indeed, it is the Secular Liberalism of what has been exposed as the tone-deaf establishment – the Blinkens, Bidens and Nods – who represented the moral hypocrisy of America's imperial democratic gift. (The sheer stupidity of the Biden re-election campaign is documented in Original Sin, 2025, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.) That is, the belief that America created modern Democracy, and that those parts of the world – especially the 'western' world – have special rights accruing to them because they have been awarded the 'tick of Democracy'. These countries – and only these countries – have the "right to defend themselves", the right to make war (as 'defence through attack'), and the "right to possess nuclear weapons". Contemporary American imperialism is mainly a 'West on East' phenomenon; Asia is the target. Ukraine and Anatolia (Türkiye) are border territories between Europe and Asia. Palestine, perhaps too, given its location on the Mediterranean Sea; though the Mediterranean littoral, from Istanbul to Morocco, is better understood as West Asia, not Europe. Iran is unambiguously a part of Asia. What we are seeing at present is nothing less than a Euro-American invasion of Asia. Imperialism. Nuclear imperialism; geopolitical imperialism; cultural imperialism. The gift that keeps on taking. Note on the boundary between Europe and Asia We should note that the core geopolitical boundary between Europe and Asia was set by Charlemagne in around the year 800; representing the border between the predominancies of Catholic Christianity and Orthodox Christianity (harking back to the Western and Eastern Roman Empires). There are other important historic geopolitical boundaries in Eurasia, of course, such as the eastern and southern borders of Orthodox Christianity; and the eastern and northern borders of Islam-dominated territories. Indeed there is perpetual tension on the Pakistan-India border. The principal medieval-era departure from that Charlemagne-set geopolitical boundary was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which peaked in territory in the fifteenth century. The first significant modern-era fudge of that geopolitical boundary was the West's acquisition of Greece over the long 19th century (essentially 1820s to 1920s). The Great World War started in 1914 very much as an East-West border conflict in the Balkans of southeast Europe. After a week or two of fudging, the anglosphere took the Eastern side; siding with Russia over Austria and Germany. Post World War Two, the next main geopolitical border fudges were the 'settlements' which placed a number of mainly Catholic East European countries into Russia's orb; and which placed Türkiye (then Turkey) into NATO. The current twentyfirst century fudge is one of European expansion, placing a number of predominantly Orthodox territories – most notably Ukraine – firmly into the European political realm. This longstanding geopolitical boundary contrasts with the widely-accepted geographic boundary; the latter – based more on physical geography and ethnicity than on faith-culture – passes along the Ural and Caucasus mountain chains, and through the lower Volga River, the Black Sea and the Bosporus/Dardanelle channels. Geopolitically, Russia, Belarus and Türkiye should be understood today to be Asian countries; indeed, the lower Dnieper River and line of the military trenches in Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk constitute the current geopolitical boundary between West and East; between Europe and Asia. And the lines within Eretz Israel – separating Israel from Palestine – also represent geopolitical borders; and American geopolitical encroachment on Asia. Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
