From the back seat of a Crown car during a pandemic, Andrew Campbell told Jacinda Ardern what few advisors dare say to a leader mid-crisis: that the government was doing too much. Now, in a memoir written from the distance of London and hindsight, Ardern's former chief press secretary reflects on the gap between the advice he gave and the advice he might have offered had he more fully understood the woman he was serving — not a manager of systems, but a conviction politician trying to reshape them. His account is less an indictment than a meditation on the cost of governing through catastrophe
Ardern's ex-press secretary: PM's govt 'did too much' during Covid
You can't ask people to surrender liberty and expect them to vote for you
Mark
So Campbell is saying the government did too much during Covid. But he also says they did an incredibly successful job. How do those two things sit together?
Mimi
He's making a distinction between the individual decisions and their cumulative effect. Each policy might have been justified in the moment, but together they created a weight that people eventually rejected. It's not that any single mandate was wrong—it's that the stack of them, never quite lifted, became politically unsustainable.
Luke
But we should be careful here. Campbell is one voice from inside the machine, and he's speaking years later, after Labour lost. It's easy to say "we should have pivoted sooner" when you know how the story ends. We don't actually know if earlier removal of mandates would have changed the 2023 outcome.
Mark
Fair point. But he's also saying he told Ardern this during the pandemic, not after. That's different—that's real-time advice, not hindsight.
Mimi
Right. And Ardern apparently took it seriously enough that she acknowledged his role as a challenger. She valued that he was willing to argue with her in the back of a car. That suggests the relationship was built on honest disagreement, not just loyalty.
Luke
True, but we only have Campbell's account of what Ardern said and thought. We don't have her response to his specific argument about the economy or the mandates. We know she acknowledged his role as a challenger, but not whether she agreed with him on the substance.
Mark
He also says the media wasn't on a string, that they were actually exposing problems. Does that hold up?
Mimi
He's naming specific things—PPE shortages, border breaches. Those are real stories that did get reported. But "the media wasn't controlled" is a broad claim, and it's coming from someone whose job was partly to manage media relations. He has an interest in saying the system worked.
Luke
Exactly. And he's also saying he didn't fully understand Ardern as a conviction politician until after the fact. If he misread her that badly, how confident should we be in his other judgments about what the government should have done?
Mark
So what's the real story here? Is it about Covid policy, or is it about Campbell's own reckoning with his role?
Mimi
I think it's both. He's reflecting on decisions made under extraordinary pressure, and he's also reflecting on himself—admitting he didn't see Ardern clearly, that he might have given different advice if he had. That's honest, but it's also a kind of self-examination that comes with distance and time.
Le Pouls
- Campbell watched from inside the machinery as pandemic restrictions accumulated without lifting, sensing early that political capital was being spent faster than it could be replenished.
- Labour's 2020 landslide and 2023 defeat form the blunt arithmetic at the heart of his critique: winning the battle against the virus meant burning the goodwill needed to win the next election.
- He argues mandates and the traffic light system lingered past their usefulness, and that a faster pivot toward economic recovery could have changed the trajectory.
- Campbell admits his deepest miscalculation was strategic rather than tactical — he advised a disruptor as though she were a caretaker, and wonders what different counsel might have looked like.
- Ardern herself, he says, understood the cost of her constant visibility and accepted it; her warmth was real, her editorial precision was formidable, and her ability to move people through communication was central to whatever the government got right.
- Now outside government and watching from abroad, Campbell sees a political landscape hungry for the kind of relentless positivity that defined Ardern's 2017 campaign — a lesson he believes remains unlearned.
From the back seat of a Crown car during a pandemic, Andrew Campbell told Jacinda Ardern what few advisors dare say to a leader mid-crisis: that the government was doing too much. Now, in a memoir written from the distance of London and hindsight, Ardern's former chief press secretary reflects on the gap between the advice he gave and the advice he might have offered had he more fully understood the woman he was serving — not a manager of systems, but a conviction politician trying to reshape them. His account is less an indictment than a meditation on the cost of governing through catastrophe, and on how even successful leadership can exhaust the public trust that makes it possible.
Andrew Campbell, who served as Jacinda Ardern's chief press secretary through the Christchurch attacks, the White Island eruption, and Covid, has written a memoir called In The Room. In it, he recounts telling Ardern directly — from the confined proximity of a Crown car — that the government was doing too much and needed to shift its focus to the economy.
His critique is measured but pointed. He believed Labour failed to dismantle pandemic restrictions quickly enough once vaccination rates were high. The traffic light system, vaccine passes, and mandates on health and education workers had, in his view, outlasted their necessity. No single decision was the problem, he argues — it was the cumulative weight of them all, the tonnage of restrictions that never quite lifted. Labour won a landslide in 2020 and were voted out in 2023. "In order to win the battle against the virus, inevitably, you have to burn a huge amount of political capital," he said.
The daily 1pm briefings that once drew public trust gradually wore people down. Ardern herself had understood what her constant exposure would ultimately cost her — and she was right. Campbell also pushed back against claims of media capture during the pandemic, noting that journalists had exposed real failures in the response and done their jobs.
His most candid admission, though, is about his own misreading of the leader he served. He had treated Ardern as a manager of the status quo when she was something else entirely — a conviction politician, a disruptor. Had he understood that sooner, he reflects, his communications advice might have looked quite different.
What he never doubted was her authenticity. Her warmth was genuine, not constructed. Her editorial precision — returning speech drafts covered in red ink — was part of what made her effective. On her final day, she told him: "Every Prime Minister needs someone who will challenge them — and that was you."
Now working for a renewable energy company in the UK, Campbell watches the current political environment and finds it wanting. The present government has had an easier inheritance than Ardern's, he thinks, and has made things harder than necessary. The lesson he takes from 2017 — that relentlessly positive leadership, grounded in genuine values, can still cut through — remains, in his view, as relevant as ever.
Andrew Campbell sat in the back of a Crown car next to Dame Jacinda Ardern during the pandemic and told her what he thought she needed to hear: the government was doing too much. It needed to pull back. The economy had to come first.
Campbell, who served as Ardern's chief press secretary through some of New Zealand's most turbulent years—the Christchurch attacks, the White Island eruption, Covid—has now written a memoir called In The Room, and in it he recounts that uncomfortable conversation, literally uncomfortable because of the proximity, the stakes, the impossibility of leaving. He believed Labour had failed to shift gears toward economic recovery anywhere near fast enough. By the end of 2021, most New Zealanders were vaccinated. The government should have dismantled mandates sooner, he argued. The traffic light system, the vaccine passes, the restrictions on workers in health and education—these had lingered too long.
Yet Campbell was careful to frame his critique. He did not say Ardern's government had failed. He said it had done an "incredibly successful job" on the things that mattered most. The problem was not any single decision but the cumulative weight of them all, the sheer tonnage of restrictions that accumulated and never quite lifted. He had watched from inside the machinery and seen early what would take years to fully materialize: that you cannot ask people to surrender their liberty and then expect them to vote for you. Labour won a landslide in 2020. They were voted out in 2023. The math was simple. "In order to win the battle against the virus, inevitably, you have to burn a huge amount of political capital," Campbell said.
The daily 1pm briefings—Ardern at the podium, often with Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the Director-General of Health—had become the rhythm of lockdown life. They drew public support at first. People listened. Then they grew tired of hearing the same message, over and over. Ardern herself had recognized what her constant visibility would cost her. Campbell said she understood that her level of exposure "was obviously ultimately going to have a consequence, and it did." She was right.
Campbell also pushed back against the idea that the media had been controlled during the pandemic, kept on a leash by the government. His recollection was different. Journalists had exposed PPE shortages, breaches at the border, real failures in the response. They had done their job. What Campbell admitted, though, was that he had misread the leader he was working for. He had treated Ardern as a manager of the status quo when she was actually a conviction politician, a disruptor trying to change the system itself. "Had I understood her as more of a disruptor, as someone who was really a kind of a conviction politician, [who] was wanting to change the status quo, not just manage it, I think some of the communications advice might have been a bit different," he said. It was a form of regret—not about the decisions made, but about the advice he might have given had he truly understood who she was.
What he did understand was her warmth. It was not manufactured. You cannot manufacture that kind of thing. It was authentic, the way she actually was—kind, genuine, present. But she was also a ruthless editor. Speech drafts Campbell thought were solid came back covered in red ink. That precision, that refusal to settle, was part of what made her effective. "I think it was a fundamental part of the success of the government, actually, was her ability to communicate effectively," he said. When you need people to take difficult actions, they have to feel safe doing it. Numbers alone will not move them. The person asking has to make them believe it is the right thing.
On her final day, Ardern told Campbell something he has carried with him: "Every Prime Minister needs someone who will challenge them – and that was you." Now, living in the UK and working for a renewable energy company, Campbell has stepped back from the machinery of government. He watches the current political environment and sees something he thinks is worth naming. The government in power now has had an easier time of it than Ardern's government did, and yet they have made things harder than they needed to be. There is too much negativity in politics, he thinks. A leader who could be genuinely positive, who could live their values without buying into the negative, would stand out. That was what Ardern's 2017 campaign had been—relentlessly positive. It is a lesson, Campbell believes, that still applies.
Citations marquantes
I thought the government was doing too much. It needed to do less. We needed to focus on the economy.— Andrew Campbell, recounting his argument with Ardern during the pandemic
Every Prime Minister needs someone who will challenge them – and that was you.— Dame Jacinda Ardern, to Campbell on his final day
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