Hello, welcome to political thinking.

A conversation with, rather than a newsy interrogation of someone who shapes our political thinking

about what has shaped theirs.

My guest this week was Prime Minister of a country with just 5 million people more than 11,000

miles away from Westminster. And yet, when Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister of New Zealand,

she instantly became a figure on the world stage, seen, as one paper put it, as the global

pin-up for progressive values. She was widely praised for her sure-footedness

in the face of not one but two disasters,

the Christchurch mosque attacks in which 51 people were murdered,

and the COVID pandemic to which she responded by sealing New Zealand's borders.

If it's possible for a plague to have a pin-up,

then Jacinda Ardern is it was the verdict of

one magazine. You notice that phrase again, pin-up, a reminder that one reason the world noticed her

was she was young, yes, a woman, and as the title of her new book confirms someone who believed

in leading with empathy. Others called

her anti-Trump. Not a phrase she much like. Dame Jacinda Ardern spent the last couple of years

in the United States writing and thinking and teaching. And she joined us now from Harvard

University. Welcome to political thinking.

Thank you for having me.

Looking back now, hearing those phrases that we used about you again and again,

pin up, how do you feel about the way you came to be seen so soon?

Actually, a reminder to me of how much I managed to avoid

...