Before the 2020 general election, despite enjoying near record personal approval ratings, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was taking nothing for granted.
"I am anything but complacent," she told the Otago Daily Times at the time.
"Maybe I have been around politics too long, maybe it is just in my nature, but I am always inclined to anticipate what could go wrong."
She was laughing as she spoke, but two years later it took a little more effort to coax a smile, let alone a full belly laugh, from Ms Ardern.
In an emotional press conference on Thursday she made the surprise announcement of her resignation as prime minister and Labour Party leader.
The strain of a prime ministership which had required her to find new depths of strength to manage crisis after crisis had clearly taken its toll and, as she said to journalists, she had nothing left in the tank.
Could she have anticipated a scenario where Labour’s greatest asset decided to retire from the field before the party next clashed with National et al on the electoral battlefield?
Perhaps not in 2020, but after a much-needed Christmas break one more surprise personal moment was, for her, inevitable and necessary.
It is easy to forget that despite having been touted as a potential prime minister for years, the ascent of Ms Ardern to party leadership and then to Premier House was an unlikely story.
She came home and stood, unsuccessfully, for Labour in the safe National seat of Waikato.
Labour lost that year and Ms Ardern’s mentor, Prime Minister Helen Clark, promptly resigned but Ms Ardern, through her high list placement, made it to the House as its youngest MP.
During nine years in Opposition Ms Ardern held a range of spokeswomanships, including youth affairs, social development, justice and arts and culture.
In 2017 Ms Ardern won a by-election in the seat of Mount Albert — once the domain of Miss Clark — and was also elected deputy leader of Labour after Annette King’s decision to step aside.
It was an election year and Labour, led by Andrew Little, seemed doomed to once again lose to National.
Seven weeks out from polling day and staring at bleak polling numbers Mr Little made the brave, and potentially foolhardy, decision to step down as leader.
The same day Ms Ardern was unanimously elected as leader and proclaimed she would run a campaign of "relentless positivity".
Prime Minister Bill English was lead-footed in responding to the new threat from the left: the new-leader bounce Ms Ardern enjoyed was soon dubbed "Jacinda-mania" and Mr English’s steady-as-she-goes economic pragmatism struggled to cut through with the electorate.
Although Ms Ardern did not win the popular vote on the night, she had succeeded in dragging Labour from the doldrums to firmly being in the conversation as to whether New Zealand First, which held the balance of power, might support Ms Ardern to become the youngest prime minister of New Zealand.
After, typically, keeping the country and his political rivals on tenterhooks, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters opted for Labour.
It did begin with another surprise though, the January 19 announcement that Ms Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford were expecting their first child. Coincidentally, January 19 this year was the day Ms Ardern announced her resignation.
Ms Ardern took becoming the first New Zealand prime minister to take maternity leave in her stride, and the country chugged along without disruption while she was away, daughter Neve being born on June 21.
Initiatives embarked upon by the Government included a pledge to halve child poverty, increase parental leave and revitalise the regions through the Provincial Growth Fund.
On March 15, 2019, a terrorist violated the sanctuary of two Christchurch mosques and murdered 51 people, an attack which shocked New Zealand and the world at large.
Ms Ardern swiftly took charge, comforting those afflicted and promising initiatives to prevent such a tragedy happening again.
Her commendable leadership through the crisis won Ms Ardern admiration both from within the country and overseas and through subsequent initiatives such as the Christchurch Call — a bid to curb extremism on the internet — elevated her to a place on the world political stage.
The eruption of Whakaari /White Island that year again required Ms Ardern to be in crisis mode, and again she responded with aplomb.
She had little time over that summer to recharge her batteries though, as health officials had warned her that a new novel coronavirus reported in China could potentially spark a pandemic.
In early March 2020, in response to the new and still little understood threat of what is now called Covid-19, Ms Ardern took the unprecedented step of closing the country’s borders. Days later the even more draconian step of shutting down the country entirely to prevent further spread of the disease was ordered.
Lockdown was a new phenomenon for New Zealand but the overwhelming majority accepted the public health argument which advisers had made to Ms Ardern for introducing such a drastic measure.
The perception that Ms Ardern had kept New Zealand safe from Covid-19, coupled with her leadership during March 15 and internal divisions within the National Party, meant the 2020 general election — despite Ms Ardern’s misgivings — was a triumph for Labour, which won an absolute majority in the House.
However, the next two years were gruelling ones, marked by increased resentment of Labour’s domestic policies and a growing low-level insurrection against Covid-19 restrictions.
The arrival in New Zealand of a Covid-19 vaccine sparked a rush to be jabbed by an overwhelming majority of people, but also provoked extreme resentment from a highly vocal minority opposed to either vaccination itself, the mandatory requirement for several classes of workers to be vaccinated, a bar on non-vaccinated people from some establishments, or all three.
While some respectfully made their objections known, Ms Ardern’s steps were soon to be dogged everywhere she went by anti-mandate protesters: ultimately, they staged a weeks-long occupation of Parliament’s grounds, which was only ended by police intervention.
Simultaneously, moves by the Government to introduce greater Maori involvement in management of natural assets, especially water, also prompted increasingly vocal opposition to Ms Ardern and her policies.
While shrugging off what was often hurtful and hateful commentary as something politicians had to anticipate as part of their job, the popular and populist Prime Minister increasingly had to be aware of threats made to her safety.
The growing tumult detracted from new Labour initiatives such as the declaration of a climate crisis, the introduction of zero carbon laws and a revamping of the government budgetary process to include a strong wellbeing focus.
Ms Ardern also proffered a long overdue apology to the Pacific community for the Dawn Raids immigration crackdowns of the 1970s and promoted a greater emphasis on New Zealand history in the school curriculum.
Other policies such as completing the Three Waters reform, revamping local government, making the supermarket sector more competitive, redrafting the resource consent process and taking on hate speech remain uncompleted and are in the in-tray of whoever the new prime minister will be, for them to decide whether to continue the Ardern legacy or strike out with a programme of their own.
