John Key hopes to be sworn in as New Zealand’s prime minister next week after his centre-right National party won an emphatic victory at the weekend election that ended the nine-year reign of Helen Clark’s Labour party.
Mr Key, a 47-year old former banker who quit his job at Merrill Lynch in New York six years ago to enter politics and become his country’s leader, was swept to power on the promise of a better future for New Zealand, which sank into recession at the start of 2008 and is suffering from rising unemployment.
