Jacinda Ardern’s political rise was so sudden that her partner Clarke Gayford “didn’t even own a suit” when she became leader of New Zealand’s Labour Party. It was August 2017, and once he’d been shopping, Gayford’s first instinct was to pick up a video camera.

“It felt monumental, and no one [was] filming it. No one was even taking photos,” Gayford says. “I remember borrowing a camera from a friend because I felt it was so significant, and because I was in the room and no one was going to tell the boyfriend off for filming.”

Seven weeks later Ardern became prime minister . At 37, she was the world’s youngest female head of government. Gayford, who’d first met Ardern five years earlier at an awards ceremony and got to know her when she was a guest on his national radio show, “as frien

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