Thomas Cranmer: From comrade to Dame in a New York minute

They say that a week is a long time in politics and indeed that seems to be truer now than ever. But consider, for a moment, the transformation that our former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made during her 15 years in New Zealand’s Parliament.

When Ardern was first elected to Parliament in 2008, she was still the President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. She managed both roles for her first 15 months in Parliament and was famously filmed giving the closing remarks at the 2009 IUSY Festival in Hungary where she referred to her fellow members as ‘comrades’ no fewer than 15 times during her seven-minute speech.