I would like to take a moment, just a moment mind you, to pay tribute to the Australian Labor Party, who were sadly ejected from office last week after six years of some of the most hysterical political infighting and backstabbing available for the enjoyment of a political observer this century. It was truly spectacular, like the Borgia’s without the style. A superlative, glorious saga of anarchic, pistols-at-dawn political duelling and cut-throat betrayal.
When the ALP rose meteorically to power in 2007, it looked for all the world as if their victory over John Howard’s long standing Liberal government would herald a long, uninterrupted period of center left dominance down under. The man who led them to victory was a fresh faced, kindly looking speccy chap named Kevin Rudd, considered a moderate within his party, but with a certain unsavory reputation for flip flopping and vagueness on many key issues. Behind him, half concealed by the shadows stood his first mate, the Fletcher Christian to his William Bligh, Julia Gillard, more favored amongst the left of the party, but harboring barely concealed ambitions of holding the top job in her own right.
Does any of this this sound familiar to you? Of course it does, but sadly it’s here our little metaphor ends. You see, this was not an Australian Blairite Revolution, but a disbelief suspending, alternate universe satire of New Labour set in Australia. Whether as the successes of the British Centre-left should have served as a handbook for their Aussie cousins, it ultimately ended up the other way around, as a play by play Shakespearean tragedy of how Blair, Brown and co definitely shouldn’t have played things. Chief advice being, of course, not to run your party on prison rules.
If you weren’t following events these last six years, let me give you a brief rundown. After his victory Kevin Rudd chugged along through the vast majority of his three year term. The financial crash didn’t skip over the Australian economy but due to a number of local factors, the Aussies were spared the worst of the trouble. The polls were tight as the 2010 election approached, but things certainly could have looked worse. So what did the ALP decide, did they elect to hang tough, to not take an enormous gamble and shiv their leader in the Parliament Showers three months before polling day? Of course they didn’t, were talking about a political party with one of the most pronounced death wishes in modern history, they did Rudd in like Sonny Corleone in the bleeding Godfather. So Gillard took charge, and managed to just about pull through in the subsequent election. Well, sort of, she ended up with the exact same number of seats as the opposition, leaving Gillard’s administration held together with bits of string, blu tack and the tenuous support of a couple of independent MP’s for the next three years.
Then of course, god bless her soul, she brought Rudd back, as foreign minister. That went about as well as you’d imagine. Old Kev lasted barely two years before resigning and attempting his own coup. He failed miserably, and returned to the back benches, but by now the polls had well and truly turned against Labor, which by this stage was fast becoming the political equivalent of mid 90s Somalia, and with the next election fast approaching, the backbenches began to quiver in their boots once more, dangerously so, given their propensity for using to them to give their leaders a good shove off Ayer’s Rock. But that was that, they were stuck this time , forced to give each other a wry grin and say “this is it mate’s, we’ve chosen Julia to lead us twice now, let’s stick to our guns and go into this election, united under our leader to whatever end”. Only of course, they didn’t, obviously, this is the ALP. So once again, with barely three months to go, they pulled the rug out from underneath their leader’s feet, and welcomed Rudd back with open arms.
So began Labor’s Swan Song. Rudd rallied his troops and made his kamikaze charge like General Custer at Little Big Horn, to be mercilessly cut down by the waiting Liberal/National Coalition, defeat, most would argue, was unavoidable, and Labor had, with their final stick of the knife, done all they possibly could to stay in government. But they did lose, and would have struggled to have done so with any less class, so back to the opposition benches they trundle, their achievements from 6 years of government almost entirely forgotten, buried under the political pantomime of the Rudd-Gillard Punch and Judy show, two politicians who were nominally, at very least, supposed to be on the same side. Still. It was all rather amusing from the sidelines, in the knowledge that as a neutral observer, you didn’t actually have to live with the results, so for that Labor. I salute you. You beautiful, self-destructive bastards.