One of New Zealand's most polarising leaders, the debate around former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern continues to rage two years after her resignation.

She led the country between 2017 and 2023, both the Christchurch Mosque shooting and the Covid-19 pandemic falling in her tenure.

Although Arden’s popularity was immense at the time, the tides have shifted within New Zealand, many questioning the actions she took and the impact they had.

"Jacinda: The Untold Stories’ is an unauthorised biography written by journalist David Cohen, drawing on more than 100 interviews and extensive research into Ardern’s time as Prime Minister.

“The ancient Greeks said, ‘count no man lest he be dead’. Jacinda Ardern isn’t dead of course, but her political career in New Zealand, not internally, is over,” Cohen told Mike Hosking.

“So we can start to assess what went wrong and what went right.”

He entered into this project with the intention of creating a balanced account, starting not as a fan of Ardern's nor as an adversary.

“I think one of the great tragedies of recent years is that we live in, in an era of the politics of emotion,” Cohen said.

“You either love someone or you hate them, and Jacinda played into that with her politics of kindness to some degree.”

He describes himself as an “old fashioned journalist”, with 25 years of experience in the field, and balance is a key tenet.

“One of our guiding ideas, injunctions, was to tell the other side, so it’s actually not a matter of whether I like her or I don’t.”

“I could say yes to both questions and no to both questions – journalistically, it was important to do this.”

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David Cohen: Journalist and Author of the unauthorised biography of Jacinda Ardern, 'Jacinda: The Untold Stories'

The Mike Hosking Breakfast