Emily Thornberry meets Jacinda Ardern in her Beehive office this week. Photo / Supplied
It is clear that visiting British MP Emily Thornberry is used to a rougher form of politics than was evident in Question Time this week under the guidance of Speaker Trevor Mallard, former Labour attack dog.
"Your Speaker is so thoughtful and kind of nice and does it almost like a stream of consciousness," she says.
"He says 'oh well, maybe I made a mistake there, maybe it's my fault but I don't think the honorable gentleman should be doing this, and come to think of it, no I don't think he should'."
Thornberry says Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons is more like a football stadium with more MPs, more noise and more aggression.
She is not wrong. The bellowing Speaker has become a familiar face on screens around the world as the kingdom gets closer and closer to a no-deal Brexit cliff – leaving the European Union without a deal.
Thornberry sits in the thick of it, as one of Jeremy Corbyn's chief lieutenants and shadow foreign secretary.
She is visiting New Zealand in that role, given there's no telling how long the current Government will last.
She is part of the shadow cabinet which decided recently Labour will outright support remain against a no-deal or even any deal proposed by new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and which Labour says should be put to a Final Say referendum.
Thornberry has no truck with Johnson and she emphatically rejects a suggestion he may be a flawed genius.
"No Boris Johnson is not a flawed genius. Boris Johnson is a show-off. Boris Johnson used being mayor of London to show off in London and now he is Prime Minister he is just using it to show off on the national and international stage.
"He has no vision. He has no idea what it is he wants to achieve in my view. All he wants to achieve is to be famous and to be able to show off. You do not need a Prime Minister like that."
Thornberry paints a picture of a chaotic country in the worst-case scenario if Britain left the EU without a deal.
"There will be chaos and there will be panic, and there will be panic-buying.
"It will be very difficult to get things through the ports. We will have great difficulty working out what we check, what we don't check, what we are allowing in, what we don't allow in.
"I know the civil service are preparing for there to be in the worst-case scenario, civil unrest."
There is increasing talk in Britain about a snap election being imminent either after the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal on October 31 – or sooner if Johnson lost a no-confidence vote before then and after MPs return from the summer break at the start of September.
Labour would then be leading the fight to remain and stop a no-deal Brexit.
"I'm afraid there's no other game in town," said Thornberry.
"It's either remaining or no-deal. And no-deal is so profoundly bad for our country, we must do everything we can, it is our patriotic duty to ensure that we don't allow this to happen."
Thornberry dismissed speculation also gaining traction in Britain that if Johnson failed to win a no-confidence vote that Jeremy Corbyn should go to the Palace in a bid to form an alternative Government without an election.
"Our way of doing things is if you've got a Government that doesn't have the confidence of Parliament you have a general election. Let's not mess around.
"Let's be clear. If a Government can't govern, get yourself another Government and actually let's have an election.
"The new Government that we've got, the Boris Johnson far-right Government that we've currently got, came into power without there being a general election, so why would we move from a Theresa May Government that never got a majority to a Boris Johnson Government that was elected by [160,000] elderly white men who live in the suburbs of limited social experience to people kind of cobbling it together and kind of going 'don't worry your pretty little head members of the public. We can put a Government together and we can sort things out'."
So what kind of Prime Minister does she think Jeremy Corbyn would be?
"He would be a Prime Minister who would work with people, who would listen, who would be collegiate, who would work within a team, who would be somebody who would put peace at the forefront of the work we would do internationally and would try to ensure we have greater equality in our country, who would bring back fairness into our country and would bring back a gentler form of politics."
She hopes to be Foreign Secretary in any Labour-led Government and outlined what she saw as the main foreign policy differences with the Conservatives.
The first main difference was that Labour was more multilateral in its approach.
"Probably one of the big things is that we would recognise the state of Palestine while there continues to be some form of Palestinian state that we can recognise. That would be a major difference.
"We would stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia because they are using them in Yemen and committing atrocities in Yemen in breach of international law.
"We would work much more in the United Nations and take our role as part of the P5 much more importantly."
Thornberry has been strident in her criticism of US President Donald Trump. Quoted recently in the Independent from a speech to supporters of a second referendum, she rejected the narrative that Trump would rescue the UK if it marched off the cliff in October with no-deal.
"I don't want Donald Trump's hands anywhere near me. And I don't want our country's fate to be in the hands of that racist, sexist, bullying monstrosity of a President."
Thornberry says she is just being honest.
"I don't see what's wrong with that.
"I think things need to be called out and I don't think Donald Trump's behaviour should be normalised. I think we should say it is outrageous, the sort of things he has been saying and the sort of things he has been doing.
"They do not accord with our values and we should not be afraid to say so. When did Britain become so afraid? Why don't we just say it as it is?"
She expressed admiration for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and what she sees as Ardern standing up to Trump.
"The way in which she stood up to Trump on the issue of racism, on climate change, so many different things she has done and we in Britain cheer her on and wish, frankly, that we had a Government that was more like that.
"It's lovely to see a different approach to politics than the one that seems to be dominant around the world and is so depressing."
As well as catching up with former Labour leaders Helen Clark and Phil Goff, she had Beehive meetings with Ardern, Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Attorney-General David Parker and Justice Minister Andrew Little.
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