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Hello and welcome to a Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.

I'm Kate Andrews and I'm joined by our editor, Fraser Nelson, and by Andrea Vance,

a journalist and author of the book Blue Blood, the Inside Story of the National Party in Crisis.

That National Party being in New Zealand where Andrea is based and we really appreciate you making the time change work Andrea to speak to us

because whilst the international story this week was supposed to be about the world's economic forum meeting

at Davos instead, it has been about Jacinda Ardern and her surprise announcement to stand down

after five years, over five years of serving as Prime Minister of New Zealand

and she'll be stepping down as head of the Labour Party there as well.

So Andrea, I'm hoping you can kick us off by telling us how this announcement has gone down in New Zealand

and give us a picture of Ardern's time in power and really what you think ultimately led her decision to stand down.

Okay, gosh, well, quite big questions has been a huge week here.

Not unprecedented because we previously had a very popular Prime Minister in Sir John Key,

who stepped down less than a year right from an election, surprising the whole country

and just a very unusual situation where you've got a popular Prime Minister who goes out on a high

to send Ardern has borrowed from his playbook.

She's made the political calculation that she cannot conceivably when the election this year,

we've got an election in October, she actually announced the date at the same time as resigning.

So she's made that political calculation, she's decided that someone else is best placed to try and get Labour over the line.

She was, of course, an accidental Prime Minister when she was elected in 2017.

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