Well, it goes to show that there IS a Santa Clause after all.  And it also goes to show what a totally shithouse perceptor of the future is your humble correspondent.  A few days ago I wrote that the Labor Party might be pragmatic, but it typically gives a leader a fair shot at failure before giving him the heave-ho.  Remember Caldwell displaced by Whitlam, Hayden pushed out by Hawke – also just before an election, Hawke by Keating ….. and now Kevin by the Power Fox.  Sorry, her Highness the Power Fox.

I don’t think Beazley by Latham and Latham by Crean (or was it the other way around) count.  None of these fine gentlemen ever had a snowball’s chance of becoming PM.

But this time, the Labor party has shown that it has definitely moved into the 21st century by striking early and going hard – on Kevin – just because he had the whiff of failure about him – and because, let’s face it, we hate to be told what to do and how to think – especially by a smart arse churchie who’s often right.  But there were quite a few not-rights, and nobody really wants to hear the PM reading the Apology-of-the-Day – day after day.  I guess the buck really DID stop with him.  And today he was well and truly bucked.  I think he deserves a great deal of respect for not contesting a vote he was certain to lose – not by a slim margin but by more than 2 to 1.  Now was not the time to take on the fat cat miners, but when Julia gets in, and has three years for electoral amnesia to weave its magic, they had better pull up their socks and take it on the fucking chin.

None-the-less it certainly highlights the difference between the ALP and rabble of the co-alition.  Three leaders in three years (the last with a single vote majority in their caucus) and all they can come up with is a budgy-smuggling bike riding swim god.  Pathetic.  True, the Labor party had a choice – an excellent choice – and the discipline to make it and make it with surgical precision.  And Labor has the luxury of not having coalition partners who are total drop-kicks.  Or Wilson Tuckey.  Or the notorious comment by Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan who once questioned Julia’s political ability because she does not have children. Senator Heffernan said Ms Gillard was unfit for leadership because she was “deliberately barren”.

I know Senator Heffernan apologised, but I’d personally love to see him eat a mountain of humble pie now.  From the arse end of the opposition benches, of course.

So how will Julia play out ?  I’m predicting a comfortable smashing of the Libs when women of Australia get to chose between a mysogynist papist and a talented woman of true grit.  Does anyone remember Tony’s “sometimes I tell fibs speech” ?  Is anyone really going to vote for that jerk ?  Maybe the Kevin haters might have.  But it’s hard to imagine now.

Another (always proven wrong) prediction…… unless the Libs really DO want to get smashed running Tony as their leader, we should expect a return from Malcolm and then we could really see the battle between equal intellects …. and between capital and labour.

I was really disappointed by Rudd and was contemplating supporting the Greens (no other choice in the NSW election – and even then, that’s a waste).  Now I’m happy to go back to the spirit of the party of the old days and support the campaign of the local federal member – as if that mattered much at all.  Maybe Maxine McKew or another marginal candidate needs the help more….

I really hope that I’ve read the tea leaves more correctly this time around – and that Julia hasn’t been given the hospital pass that Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner (Anna Bligh – almost….) and certainly Kristina Keneally have taken…..