How reluctant leader Jacinda Ardern charmed New Zealand

Less than three months ago, Jacinda Ardern, preoccupied by home renovations, said the only way she would ever lead New Zealand’s Labour party would be if her entire caucus was hit by a bus and she was the “designated survivor”.

Now, she finds herself about to take office as New Zealand’s third female prime minister, and its youngest leader for 150 years.

After a 26-day wait, kingmaker Winston Peters, of the New Zealand First party, threw his support behind Ardern’s party on Thursday, allowing Labour to form a coalition government with NZ First and the Greens, with a slim majority in parliament.

Ardern – a 37-year-old former Mormon and occasional DJ – campaigned on a somewhat nebulous platform of hope and change. But after the most exciting and closely contested New Zealand election in decades, it appears her gamble has paid off.

Ardern has pledged to deliver a better life for New Zealanders by ending child poverty, making rivers swimmable again, building affordable homes and preparing young people for an unpredictable future through free tertiary education and a bigger student allowance.

“We aspire to be a government for all New Zealanders and one that will seize the opportunity to build a fairer, better New Zealand,” Ardern said. “We will work hard to ensure New Zealand is once again a world leader, a country we can all be proud of. We said we could do this, we will do this.”

Ardern’s victory is a major coup for the left, as her liberal, socially progressive policies are in direct contrast to increasing isolationism in the northern hemisphere – the key reason Peters said he decided to throw his support behind her party and form a coalition with Labour over the National party.

Peters said the global environment was undergoing rapid and seismic change, similar to the years before the global financial crisis, and he believed a Labour government was best placed to handle the social and economic welfare of New Zealanders during this turbulent period in history.

“For too many New Zealanders, capitalism has not been their friend but their foe,” Peters said, claiming vulnerable people had been left behind while the political elite got richer. “We believe capitalism must regain its human face, and that conviction deeply influenced our decision.

“The biggest issue is, we have heard and read many comments about poverty and the concertina-ing of wealth in fewer and fewer hands ... That has to change.”

Ardern’s rapid ascent to become New Zealand’s 40th prime minister began on 1 August. The week before, the then Labour leader, Andrew Little, approached his popular and dynamic deputy after repeatedly tanking in the preferred PM polls.

Little asked Ardern to lead the party as the left’s only hope of securing a change of government after three terms in opposition. Ardern – who has repeatedly said her anxiety precluded her from taking on the top job – said no. Seven times.

All Ardern wanted was to be minister for children. At 37, she wanted a family at some point, fewer sleepless nights, and a break from her persistent fear that she wasn’t doing enough, being enough, to everyone in her life. “I am a thinker and I do muse over things a lot, and am constantly assessing whether I am doing enough, or what I should be doing more of to make sure I am not letting anyone down,” she told the Guardian.

For years the Labour party had languished in the polls, viewed as snippy and uninspiring. But Ardern’s political nous is complemented by a generous dollop of uncultivated charm and humour, and her youth and energy communicated for voters a different future for New Zealand.

She has promised to lift more than 200,000 children out of poverty, raise the minimum wage, crack down on foreign speculators buying up prime land, and increase the refugee quota.

“What Brexit and the Trump outcome really said to me is, we do have a sense of financial insecurity that really exists in a number of countries, and politicians have the choice to either respond to that financial insecurity with messages of hope, and a plan around how we are going to, in the face of ongoing globalisation and automation, make sure that there is a future for our workforce and our young people; or we can respond to the fear that exists,” Ardern told the Guardian.

“I think that fear has legitimately come through in those elections, and that really was a message to me about what we need to be talking about to allay those fears.”

A devoted Labour member since the age of 17, Ardern eventually said yes to the leadership. Within weeks, support for Labour had surged dramatically, increasing polling results by 19 points in just over a month.

Her popularity was dismissed as “stardust” by her opponent, the National party’s Bill English, who anticipated that her honeymoon period would be short-lived. But he was wrong. Young voters and women championed Ardern’s vision, and she quickly became known for her wit and backbone when facing opponents.

From Auckland convention centres to grimy pubs on the west coast, Ardern’s personal popularity drew huge crowds around the country – an outpouring that was dubbed “Jacindamania”, and led to comparisons between Ardern and “rock star” politicians such as Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau.

“Do it for all of us,” the UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, recently urged her, reflecting the hopes of Labour supporters around the world.

“I am certainly going to try to keep positive momentum for the progressive movements from around the world,” said Ardern, when asked if she had been passed the torch from Corbyn and from Bernie Sanders in the US. “But I can only be myself. I am never going to replicate any other leader. They’ve done amazing things in and of their own right, but I’m Jacinda Ardern.”

When Labour eventually takes office it cannot expect an easy ride. With controversial plans to slash immigration, address the boom in dairy and explore a manned re-entry of the Pike river mine, Ardern’s government will face fierce opposition from the National party, which holds 56 seats in the 120-strong parliament, and from many sectors of New Zealand society that want the country to stay the same.

But for now, Labour’s battle is over. Change has come to New Zealand, whether it is ready or not.