The moment that highlighted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after weeks of campaigning

Attention, says Jacinda Ardern, has never bothered her. Being in a crowd is not worrisome. Having to talk to people all the time, well, she got into politics because “I love being around people.”

You don’t want the audience to walk away thinking you are rude. She is very aware of that. So only once in a lifetime can the prime minister remember being “a little short” with someone. It was in the underwear section of Farmers.

A fan who had already waved once circled for another chat as Ardern grabbed a “handful of things that would normally make someone feel like they shouldn’t be there.” The Diplomatic Protection Squad “carried out an intervention. And they also seemed somewhat uncomfortable: they didn’t want to be near me at the time. “

In reality, she says, shopping for underwear is an opportunity to even get rid of security: “If I ever walk into a Bendon store, DPS won’t follow me. I can go in there just to have a little peace of mind. “

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Because loneliness is a rarity for a prime minister. Even if his partner Clarke Gayford and daughter Neve are in Auckland, there is always DPS downstairs at Premier House. On Election Day, Ardern went somewhere – she doesn’t say where – outside the home to write her winner speech, and realized that it was the first time she was truly alone. For weeks. “It called my attention. At the time, I thought ‘wow, it’s been a long time.’

She smiles. “If I’m alone for a long time, I think too much.”

The next time alone might not be until summer vacation. There is a lot of work to be done before then.

On election night last Saturday, he admits to having a number in mind that “I thought would be good,” and the 49 percent of the votes that Labor got was significantly higher than that.

When the first numbers appeared that night around 7:30 p.m., Ardern was convinced that the gap with National would close significantly. “I thought all night: ‘He will go away.’ And at some point, I thought ‘it really hasn’t moved that much.’

So he went to his room and modified that speech, then had to decide when to go to the Labor campaign party to deliver it. She left late because she was fascinated by a handful of seats, particularly Ilam, where Gerry Brownlee was ousted by Sarah Pallett, and Rangitata, who was Labor for the first time.

Ardern spoke with the faithful, gave live interviews on both television channels, held a media scrum, arrived at midnight, went home. There doesn’t seem to be a moment of wild celebration. He worked on Sunday except to watch the All Blacks tryout, went to Wellington, spent the week there, returned to Auckland on Thursday night and here we are on Friday, in the depressing atmosphere of his constituency’s office on Mt Albert .

In the panel beater next door, a mechanic is noisily working on a car. A couple of policy guys are downstairs in the office kitchen, a press secretary peeks out, and by the front door sits a serious man with a holster who couldn’t look more like one of those reluctant DPS officers. underwear if you had written your job title. across his chest.

The bathroom is in a shed studded in the back, where the soap dispenser has a sticker that says’ Job: keeping you clean; National: cleaning you ‘. Ardern’s own office is a spartan box office up a steep flight of stairs, with a direct view of the railway line to Helensville, sparsely decorated except for a Rob Muldoon cartoon and a framed picture of ‘Big Norm’ Kirk.

It is a suitable setting, because if there is a topic for this discussion, it is work. The phrase he uses the most in our half hour together is “keep going.”

After the elections, Ardern appeared on the front page of British newspapers (“strange,” she says) and received congratulations from Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison, the leaders of Denmark, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Niue, the Cook Islands and the NATO. And Trump? “Not yet. But often the leaders do it by letter, and we don’t text or tweet each other, and he has elections too, so he’s reasonably busy.”

Of course, I say, many of us are horrified at the prospect of Trump being re-elected. It’s you? He ducks his head momentarily, raises it again and with a very serious face says: “My job is, whatever happens, to make our international relations work for New Zealand. I’ve worked hard on it. ”

A slight change of expression and tone, heading towards jocularity, “and I’ll keep working hard on that.”

I admit that this wasn’t the most subtle hand grenade to throw, but I can still admire its deft handling. This is my first time interviewing her, and while it’s not a huge reveal that’s incredibly refined, it comes without that obvious, irritating, over-trained flannel of many politicians who only talk about what it is. they I want to talk.

If a question doesn’t particularly interest you, it will still give you a fairly straightforward, direct but closed answer. If you’re interested, you’ll get involved, smile, and then at some point in your response, subtly shift it to a point about politics.

How long will she last as prime minister? Two more years, four? She deviates, saying that she focuses on what she wants to achieve, not personal plans, a tactic adopted because “I have seen that people do not accept their new political reality as quickly as they need to.” He says he has told his inner circle to let him know when he “stops making a difference.”

What would she do? “No idea. I’ll probably spend a little more time with my daughter.”

She tries, she says, to be there in the afternoons for two-year-old Neve, if she is not there in the mornings. During the campaign, he could not. She was “absent”.

“That’s difficult. Very tough. People are lovely, and they ask how she is, and they say ‘oh, it’s going so fast’ and I think that’s true, it’s going fast and I’m missing it.” She looks briefly dejected. “I do my best to be the best mother that I can be, and as present as I can be, and I can see that she is happy. I work very hard not to regret it. “

We approach the idea of ​​succession from another angle. I ask if there is an inevitability of the political cycle: that Labor will win again in three years, but lose in six. “Politics in New Zealand is very cyclical, it absolutely is,” he says. “I would be arguing against the facts if I tried to argue something different. So there is a degree to which it cannot be taken personally: this is how our political cycles have worked. It doesn’t mean that you don’t give everything to keep supporting what you’re doing. “

So, with a time limit on her administration, she talks about how difficult it is to accomplish much in the first period because of the “time it takes to stop the machine and turn it around,” but that she hopes to do a lot this time. She agrees that three-year political terms are “insane,” that four years between elections would be much more sensible, and suggests a referendum to see if the public, as they suspect, agrees.

There is fear on the left that the language used by both Ardern and his de facto MP Grant Robertson on election night will hint that they will be playing with national voters who crossed over, rather than their base. She vigorously rejects him.

“If you put an agenda and people vote for it in solid numbers, it doesn’t mean you change your agenda, you say ‘okay, people agree with me, now move on.’ That’s what intrigues me about the comment that “a part of their vote came from these people.” Does that mean you change your schedule? They voted for the plan, they know exactly who you are and I think there is a difference when you vote in your second term … they know who you are, they expect you to remain who you are and move on. ”

He also says that he can follow the polls, see that his show has support, but also have the courage to follow an unpopular policy knowing that it is the right one.

At Covid, Ardern is particularly skilled. How long can we all stay in a closed room? Other countries, he says, are having the same conversation about how long they should be locked up or how sustainable it is to continue living with a rising virus. Everyone is making an exchange. “There is no version of Covid management that is pain free. We have just chosen to sacrifice our borders for some time. ”She believes that may continue until a vaccine arrives in mid-2021, and when it arrives, she says it will launch quickly and be essentially universal.

Without the Covid crisis, would Labor have won this election? Yes, she says, she trusts that they would have done it, but she turns it around: “I propose a reverse proposal: [win] if we don’t handle it well? I believe that Covid, or the management of any crisis, can make or break a government. I would rather have an election without it, I would rather have a country without it, it brings so much pain to our people and our economy … but I think we got a message from our voters to go ahead and put our plan in motion. “

So it’s time to “move on” with the most important thing: Covid recovery. He talks about expanding the small business loan scheme, about creating regional jobs, but also about getting early results on the environment and climate change.

I ask her about home prices and she goes into a few things about progressive home ownership, which allows buyers to pool funds and work to lower deposit levels. “There is more work to be done,” he says. “In general, all this work to be done.”

And with that, it’s time, as she would say, to move on.