Jacinda Ardern has resigned as prime minister of New Zealand and will be leaving office on 7 February.

World leadership has rarely seen anything like her. The dignity and integrity of her departure strikes a paradoxically powerful note, especially at a time when political transition in democracies from the United States to Brazil has been marred by violence and insurrection.

The childhood Mormon who became the world leader of the International Union of Socialist Youth was elected leader of NZ Labour in 2017. Ardern subsequently became the world’s then-youngest elected national leader at the age of 37.

She returned to government a Labour party who many thought was condemned to an ongoing political wilderness by using “Jacindamania” to boost the Labour vote in 2017 into a politically adroit coalition with minor parties. She maintained elements of that coalition by grace even when she provided her party with a thumping outright majority in the “Jacindaslide” of 2020.

Over her five years of leadership she shepherded New Zealanders through […]