Does Albanese have early onset Joe Biden?

Labor leader Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden (right).

The growing indications that opposition leader Anthony Albanese is suffering from “Early Onset Joe Biden” is now a matter of more fundamental concern, way beyond the daily noise of the election campaign.

This is the person who is still long odds-on to be our Prime Minister come May 22. Can we seriously risk having an essentially non-functioning and indeed non-functionable leader in a replay of Biden?

At least, in Albanese’s case, we wouldn’t be running the risk of him mixing up the ‘Red Button’ on his desk to fire you-know-what and the ‘Brown Button’ to summon another serve of chocolate chip ice-cream.

But that’s a small mercy for us to be thankful for – and, incidentally, let’s hope ‘they’ve’ disconnected the cord from that Red Button under the desk.

On Monday we had the man-who-would-be-PM’s cash rate/jobless rate blunder. That should have been instantly disqualifying.

In its way it really was as bad as a PM-candidate not knowing the difference between the Senate and the House of Reps.

You think I take that too far? Well, a week back he indicated he didn’t know the difference between The Lodge – where the PM lives – and Government House Yarralumla where the Governor-General does.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese. Picture: Toby Zerna

In what was intended to be a carefully rehearsed zinger, Albanese said that if the PM did not know where the Governor-General lived, he was prepared to offer him a lift to The Lodge.

Then, only a week or so before that, he had mangled another carefully rehearsed zinger, declaiming “this is a government that has been in decade for almost an office”.

Now these can mostly be excused as slips of the tongue – not the cash rate/jobless rate double blunder, though; that was seriously and seriously disturbing substantive.

But even then, as Oscar Wilde could have written: one slip could be regarded as misfortune, two perhaps carelessness, but three?

Did I write three? Make that four.

Day two of the campaign Albanese said he hadn’t a clue who “Ms Findlay” was. Just the Human Rights Commissioner, that’s all – not exactly a nobody, especially for someone who pretends to be focused on human rights; right after nailing jobs.

All this is looking all too uncomfortably like ‘Early Onset Joe Biden’ – maybe only uncomfortable for the Labor Party, but seriously disturbing for the nation.

And we’ve got 38 days to go.

Now this might sound utterly, utterly absurd; but can Labor – in its very, very narrow own self-interest – really persist with him as leader?

Indeed, could he be persuaded to ‘do the right thing’ and step down?

Just asking. For a friend.

Coming into this year, you could seriously pose the question whether the Liberal Party could persist with Scott Morrison. It did, and it looked like – at least to me – to be heading for defeat.

Now, extraordinarily, it has swung 180 degrees. Albanese could well be on the way to leading Labor to losing the unlosable election; beyond even what happened in 2019.

This is starting to look 1990 Redux; when John Hewson ‘cooked his – and the Coalition’s – goose’ over the infamous cake.

Indeed, it’s looking excruciatingly worse as Albanese blunders daily.

On a more sobering note, overnight Tuesday reality will have surfaced with the latest inflation figures from the US.

They will have signalled more financial turmoil –and rising global interest rates – in a pungent pointer to our own inflation data from the ABS in exactly two weeks.

Oh, and a freebie for Albanese: headline inflation is currently 3.5 per cent. There’s also this thing called ‘underlying inflation’, but that’s in the post-graduate instruction.

That inflation figure is up there at the top of the ABS home page – just next to the 4.0 per cent unemployment rate.