My own view of Ardern is that she's mostly a female version of John Key. Excellent at mood reading/communicating sufficiently well to get votes, smiling for the camera, and probably reasonably intelligent. But neither of them have any great vision, easily surrender to real politik, and saturates the airwaves with glib one-liners that lack any substance (e.g. "Be kind!"). The one thing she seems to have over John Key is that she doesn't have the obvious trace of sociopathy that Key's background makes abundantly clear. Their lack of any unifying vision (caused partly by their unwillingness to challenged entrenched interests/notions that debilitate their ability to execute) sometimes have also proven to be their strengths: they've at least by and large left the bureaucrats to do their jobs when things really matter. Mostly both are reasonably steady hands that haven't rocked the boat or allowed things to get disastrously bad. But neither achieved/will achieve a lot of their explicitly/implicitly stated goals e.g. Key's stated goals for NZ to catch up with Aus' standard of living.

They are your classic 6.5/10 performers.