Australia will have a new Prime Minister today.
It is an extraordinary turn of events.
Kevin Rudd’s base of power within the Labor Party was based on two things: delivering government and maintaining government.
He has no particular factional alignment that provides him with a power-base in the Labor movement.
When elected leader Rudd chose his own team, but chose them from people who had deeply and personally opposed him.
The sight of a grinning Wayne Swann (Rudd’s Treasurer) walking into the party room beside Gillard is something of an indicator of how thin any loyalty Rudd commanded really was.
If these machinations took place about one year after the next election (which I expected Labor to win) I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
Why now? Panic on the part of the Labor party.
While the polls may have cast their fortunes as in decline, when an actual election is called the public have to make a choice about who they think can best govern them into the future, not vent and complain about how they perceive the present situation. The Labor party would have been well placed to present themselves as the best alternative.
What happened?
I believe that Rudd’s social conservatism and lack of roots in the labor movement meant that people were simply biding their time to get rid of him.
In the absence of a credible opposition for much of this term, the media have found themselves functioning as the opposition.
They have cultivated a narrative where the Prime Minister has been judged and found wanting, not on matters of substance, but on matters of perception. This narrative has not been opposed by those within the government leadership, who have no personal liking for Rudd. Those members of the party who felt some debt of gratitude to Rudd for their election were not in positions of influence.
Similarly, a narrative has been created that has cast Julia Gillard as competent. The narrative is more reflective of her roots in the labor movement and her gender than any other significant factors. Her notable policies are Medicare gold and the education revolution, both of which are breathtaking rhetoric, but have not been well administered.
She is a very left-wing politician, perhaps the most left-wing politician to lead this country. Any scrutiny of her life and past, to which political leaders are usually subject, has largely been absent. The media are fascinated with the concept of Gillard as P.M., much the same way the U.S. media were fascinated with Obama as President and the U.K. media with Nick Clegg.
Having cultivated this narrative for some time, the media will now have a new narrative to play with: what to do with a political party that has dumped its leader in his first term after winning goverment?
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