Is it time to revisit Kevin?

It didn’t seem so lively under 11-years of John Howard’s Prime Ministership.

There were the occasional leadership spats between him and Treasurer Peter Costello but even they were whimpers on the political stage. Begrudgingly kept in check for the greater good, of course. Then 2007 came and, well, we’ve been on the political equivalent of a see-saw ever since. A see-saw that’s plunging over a waterfall, apparently.

Annabel Crabb takes a look at the Labor Party now, compared to how it was travelling a little over a year ago when Kevin Rudd was rolled due to ‘external circumstances’:

“What were the external circumstances at the time? Some average-to-discouraging polls, a couple of policy debacles, a grim stand-off with the mining industry. And the great leadership hiccup of the Rudd period, which was to effect an apparent reversal on climate change policy (a reversal to which he was urged by others, including Julia Gillard).

Fourteen months later, one would have to say the external circumstances have worsened. The Prime Minister still outpolls European carp and tinea, but only just. A further reversal on climate policy (this time 100 per cent the work and judgment of the Prime Minister herself) poisons the water.

But is Labor really a spent force? It certainly feels like it. Peter Hartcher writes:

“What should Labor do? In their review of Labor after the 2010 election, three of the party’s wise men – Carr, Faulkner and the former Victorian premier Steve Bracks – recommended opening up the party to allow its ordinary members to have a bigger voice, diminishing the dominance of the unions and the machine men.

Niki Savva was characteristically abrupt:

“Even though they know it’s over, senior Labor figures have formed a Praetorian guard around their faded empress. Even though they cannot say it publicly yet, and she cannot bear to face up to it, the sad truth is the Gillard Experiment has failed. All that remains is how to end it, when and with whom.

But Richard Glover took a different tack when he asked, genuinely, what the hell has she done to deserve all this ‘disquiet’:

“Can someone explain to me why people hate Julia Gillard with such intensity? Why is she getting so much more heat than other politicians who have made mistakes? The role of the press gallery, as someone once said, is to come down from the hills after the battle is over and bayonet the already dying. That’s what has happened all week: countless opinion pieces finding a variety of ways of saying, ”Oh, it’s all over now. What a fool that woman is.”

…

I’m not trying to argue that Gillard is a great prime minister or that Abbott would be better or worse.

Well, what do you make of all this? Where are we headed and what do you make of the leaders taking us there?

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