We are a long way from the stiff-lipped loftiness of political eras past — particularly if you happen to be a woman, in which case you must now try your darndest to impress on the electorate that you are a “human”. How better to sugar the pill of making difficult decisions than to give voters behind-the-scenes access to your hopes, dreams and struggles with breastfeeding? Without these essential insights, we might think you’re slashing public services just to be mean. A century after women entered Parliament, half the battle seems to be an interminable task of identifying with the electorate.

This has been the approach, since the beginning of her political career, of the former leader of New Zealand. A flattering new documentary about Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister, out in UK cinemas on Friday, does this relating thing relentlessly for nearly two hours. It succeeded enough to scoop a Sundance award and earn plaudits from reviewers for its “tender” portrayal of Ardern’s time in office and beyond: the slings and arrows of the electoral battles, volcanic eruptions, terror attacks and the Covid pandemic — plus the small matter of having a baby. Much of the footage is shot by her now husband Clarke Gayford, who captures her looking exhausted in various locales — bed, a taxi, an office. When Ardern announces her pregnancy, she starts by derpily telling the snappers outside her front door: “Well, this is normal!” She brings said baby to the UN General Assembly, and she cries to Crowded House in the final scene.

In one early clip, Ardern snaps back at snarky reporters who asked, before her precipitous rise to the top of national politics, whether she could lead a government at the age of 37. “Would you like to tell me why you don’t think I can?” Girlboss alert! When she wins, the moment is set to the strains of New Zealand’s most authentic daughter, Lorde (who has also perfected the art of the public personal struggle). After resigning in 2023, Ardern becomes a fellow at Harvard and marauds Massachusetts armed with a coffee, dangly earrings swaying. As if to explain the existence of this film, she tells seminars “we have to rehumanize one another again”. She also tells the UN that politics must start on a foundation of “kindness”, whatever that means.

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Rarely, if ever, are Ardern’s political decisions critiqued. This is a film about and for her, nevertheless its claims about her tenure are not explained or tested, heard only out of her mouth or those of fuming protesters. We hear, for example, that she “lifted” children out of poverty; we hear that her election-winning strategy, cobbled together seven weeks before polls opened due to the sudden resignation of Labour leader Andrew Little, consisted only of being “myself”. The viewer is asked to accept sentimentality in place of rigor. It is almost impossible to imagine a man asking the same. “I am human. Politicians are human,” Ardern says. When’s the last time you heard a bloke make that appeal? Why, then, must women?

Of course, as the story unfolds there are moments of delicious irony. Gayford snaffles Ardern’s favorite “pregnancy biscuits”, which are fortified to help women prepare for breastfeeding; in the dim light of the family kitchen Ardern teases him “are you worried about your lactation?”. How ridiculous that a man could lactate, right? But beyond those four walls, where throwaway jokes speak to sanity and reality, Ardern promoted gender politics where male breastfeeding would not be ridiculous at all. Her government conscientiously promoted self-ID. She removed the cap on how many gender-affirming surgeries the public could be expected to pay for. She introduced a sweeping ban on conversion therapy, heedless of the chilling effect on clinical or therapeutic caution. She also backed Laurel Hubbard’s selection to represent New Zealand in women’s weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics. Hubbard is over six foot tall and a man. So why is the idea of a man breastfeeding so funny? It’s his human right.

Trading off political coherence with tenderness, humanity or the like is not a good deal, for the viewer or the voter. The fact is that those in high office are not just like us: they have immense power and bulging portfolios, and face relentless pressure from a public poised to despise them. They have armies of advisors, drivers and aides. They don’t go to supermarkets. If they go to the pub, it is to a private room — or else in the presence of a bank of photographers yearning to snap foam on the leader’s lip. It is a politician’s privilege to be more important and more lucky than most of her constituents. The perks of power — chauffeurs, caterers, the rare ability to afford childcare — ensure a government has no excuse but to do a good job. These public-funded luxuries allow us to hold leaders to higher standards. I don’t want “one of us” to hold the nuclear codes: this person must be exceptional.

So why is “rehumanizing” such a high priority for the political class today? The Left is withstanding a positive epidemic of relatability. Everywhere we look, our elected officials are stooping to our level to pinch our cheeks; it’s grimly undignified for all involved. Britain’s Prime Minister, flanked by his dour Education Secretary, is flailing his hands in a mimed juggling motion in a Peterborough primary school: “Everybody, six-seven,” Starmer bleats in desperation, like a sheep wedged in a ditch. Our Chancellor, to fend off backlash before a Budget which snatches thin gruel from young Brits to further fatten plump pensioners, gives interviews to national newspapers in which she complains about “mansplaining” from her critics. Any appraisal of Rachel Reeves’s policy, the comment suggested, was personal, sexist and unjust.

In fairness, the Times interview which drew so much ire did include some professionalism: urged by the reporter to talk about “my recipe for Yorkshire puddings or what really made me cry” (at the dispatch box in July), Reeves counters that “people don’t want to read about [that]”. She wanted to show them, instead, “that they can trust me with their money”; “I’m not a public personality. I’m not in showbusiness. I’m the chancellor.” Quite right, Rachel! Reintroducing a frosty remoteness to public office would lend politics, and in particular this beleaguered Chancellor, some “headroom” to get on with the job — a little personal distance would go a long way. A shame, then, that in order to drive this point home Reeves continued: “I’m a mom with two kids. I’m a wife and a daughter. I wasn’t born into this and I’m just trying to do my best.”

Oh, as long as you’re trying your best! Whoever the public elects, man or woman, should be effective enough not to have to constantly appeal to their humanness and vulnerability. Situating the struggles of being a female politician in particular within the compensatory context of family life is a dire and regressive technique; were it Richard Reeves we were dealing with, we would never expect him to sweeten the pot of debilitating tax rises by reminding us that he is “a son”. The entire performance of relatability, endemic in contemporary politics, smacks of a hostage looking a gunman in the eye to stop him shooting: when women do it, what it reveals is not that these are exceptional operators who do it all and want us to bloody well know it, but that these are women scared of the public and insecure in their positions. In this, the vitriolic and often violent electorate is also to blame.

For schoolgirls following the tenure of the first female British chancellor, or the Millennial role model Jacinda Ardern, or indeed any number of Labour women — Jess Phillips, Stella Creasy, Angela Rayner — who constantly appeal to their inspirational stories of personal strife, the message is not that women can do anything. It’s that if you insist on doing it, you must also constantly roleplay apologetic femininity. How often do we hear these women speak about “imposter syndrome” — about how lucky they are to be there at all? The logic is that this framing excuses a shoddy job, or ideological lameness, or media mistakes. Male politicians, particularly white ones, almost never retreat to aspirational stories about their boyhood ambitions because they don’t have to explain why they’re there. Women do not either. To restore some of politics’ prestige and mystique, we must insist on a new contract with the public: seriousness, distance and inscrutability in exchange for a baseline of respect.

On the eve of last week’s trip, Hipkins declined to follow Joe Biden’s lead in calling Xi Jinping a “dictator”, awkwardly claiming that he couldn’t offer an assessment because he hadn’t met him yet, before adding that if the Chinese people wanted to change their system of government, then “that would be a matter for them”.

While in China, Hipkins was fêted by his host, who praised the “great importance” of the relationship with its “friend and partner”, and remarked that other countries in the region were following the visit closely, a not-so-subtle dig at the more combative Australian approach to the relationship. Hipkins returned the favour by toning down his criticism of the human rights situation in the country, especially the treatment of the Uyghurs, sparking criticism from advocacy groups.

Be that as it may, using the kind of megaphone diplomacy employed by the likes of Australia or America is questionable for a small country like New Zealand, which has little to gain and a lot to lose from openly antagonising Xi. With almost 30% of the country’s exports — primarily agricultural products — going to China, New Zealand has been anxious to avoid becoming the “New Australia”, which has seen its goods hit with tariffs in response to its calls for an international inquiry into the origins of Covid-19. Accordingly, Hipkins has played a straight bat, remarking that “trade is a centrepiece for the trip”, bringing 29 business executives with him, and signing new deals on trade, agriculture, forestry, education and science and innovation. As he remarked, such deals are “bread and butter” for a trading nation like New Zealand.

This is certainly a change from his predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, who was hailed as the conscience of the world during her prime ministership, not afraid to tackle big moral issues on the global stage. This was always a bit of a misconception: commercially astute when it came to trade deals, Ardern was careful to tread a fine line between its traditional security partners in the West and its biggest export market. Her government resisted Western pressures to securitise the relationship, and urged Australia to “follow us and show some respect” to China.

Nevertheless, the contrasting tone between Hipkins and his predecessor is not an accident. Since taking over in January, he has been conscious of toning down the inspiring rhetoric, and switching the focus onto issues preoccupying Labour’s more traditional working-class base. Unpopular initiatives, such as water governance reform, mandating bio-fuel usage or stopping the merger of the public broadcasters, have been thrown on the “policy bonfire”, while the minimum wage has risen and government payments to middle and lower-income households were increased by $2 billion.

Not yet six months into his premiership, Hipkins has constantly emphasised a single-minded focus on “bread and butter issues”, such as fixing the economy. And New Zealand’s economy certainly needs fixing. Like the rest of the world, the country has been struggling with inflation, which averaged 7.2% in 2022 and 6.7% in the first quarter of 2023. In response, the country’s hawkish central bank moved rapidly to raise rates, from 0.75% at the start of 2022 to 5.5% today, above even the 5% rate in the US. While the Federal Reserve still hopes to engineer a “soft landing” by cooling price rises without sparking a recession, New Zealand’s economy has already crashed. GDP contracted 0.8% in the December 2022 quarter, and a further 0.1% in the following three months.

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And while unemployment remains low for now, the prognosis isn’t good as consumers rein in their spending and businesses start defaulting on their loans, with experts predicting the recession might well continue into the middle of next year. Even New Zealand’s housing market, long-rivalling Australia’s for wild price rises, has taken a hit, with house prices dropping by 18% since November 2021, wiping more than $6 billion from household wealth.

This cycle of post-Covid inflation and rate hike-induced recession is not unique to New Zealand, with many other Western states experiencing similar scenarios. However, these come in the context of problems that have plagued the country for decades. Consider the housing market. New Zealand is the sixth-least affordable country in the world to buy a house, with an average household taking almost 12 years to save for a deposit, and spending around half of its gross income servicing their mortgage.

Restrictive planning regulations, insufficient rates of housing construction and a tax and regulatory regime that favours property investors over owner-occupiers have all created this crisis. And on each of these factors, successive governments have failed to conjure remedy. As a result, young people are priced out of the market, and a record number of citizens — almost 1% of the population — are homeless. Meanwhile, the top 10% of the population control 50% of the wealth, while the bottom 20% hold 1%. No wonder some commentators are warning that New Zealand is becoming a country of “the landed gentry”.

New Zealand’s problems are not limited to housing. The country experiences shamefully high rates of child poverty, its health system struggles with perennial staffing shortages, its infrastructure faces a $210 billion funding deficit, and its waterways are among the most polluted in the developed world, with nearly 60% of rivers carrying pollution above acceptable levels. The persistent failure of the country’s leaders to address these problems led to Ardern’s election in 2017, as she promised to tackle these deep-seated sources of disadvantage; her failure to do so spurred her already declining popularity before she resigned earlier this year. Once Hipkins took over, many hoped his back-to-basics approach would finally see some progress, and he was initially rewarded with a boost to his, and his government’s, popularity.

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However, six months later, this glow is fading. Labour is essentially tied in support with the centre-right National Party, ahead of an election due in October. Undoubtedly, tackling the deep-seated problems plaguing the country is a long-term task — but so far it is not clear whether Hipkins will fare any better than his predecessor, his “working-class” persona notwithstanding.

Indeed, perhaps his greatest source of strength is the uninspiring state of New Zealand’s opposition. Only recently, National Party leader, former businessman Christopher Luxon, was caught on tape complaining that New Zealand is a “very negative, wet, whiney and inward-looking country” that has “lost the plot”. And amid rumblings about a potential challenge to his leadership, only 18% of voters describe him as their preferred prime minister.

On the policy front, meanwhile, the party offers little more than a reheated version of its usual agenda: tough on crime, miserly on spending and beating up on beneficiaries. Failing to grasp that these are the same policies that contributed to the country’s current malaise, exasperated National supporters have taken to blaming the media or denying the polls are accurate to explain their low levels of support.

In this context, Hipkins’s straightforward approach might be just enough to get him across the line in October. Either way, it doesn’t look like New Zealand’s problems will see any solutions any time soon. Six months later, the post-Ardern boom is yet to materialise.