Dan Andrews was reviled by the right but enough voters kept backing him

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announcing his resignation on Tuesday. Picture: David Crosling

Dan Andrews’ ruthless divisiveness was unmatched.

He leaves a legacy as contested as the political battlefield that he ruled over, a strategy that was built on winning and holding office at any cost.

Andrews was fuelled by a precocious, instinctive talent that, in the end, could not mask the deep flaws that delivered an imperfect pandemic response and a smashed budget.

Victoria’s finances are in terrible shape, but don’t expect Andrews to be apologetic.

“I am not a regretful person, I don’t look back,’’ he said at Melbourne’s Parliament House.

Andrews was Australia’s first truly modern political leader, marketing himself shamelessly at younger, digital era voters while wedging the Greens in the inner city.

He wedged everyone, sometimes - in the case of the pandemic - he wedged himself.

Andrews was a creature of party headquarters who saw life principally through the prism of numbers - 50 per cent plus one.

Reviled by the right but loved by the left, Andrews delivered Labor three election wins and skewered four Liberal leaders. He was an election-winning machine.

Andrews was, in many senses, popular in raw numerical terms but he profited by a roll call of catastrophic Liberal failures.

Andrews led the national debate on social issues for years and supercharged the state’s economy by pouring concrete like it was Carlton Draught after a grand final win.

At no point after the 2020 pandemic broke out did he look like demanding serious budget repair.

Despite all this, Andrews, just 38 when elected leader in 2010, goes down as the most influential premier in Victoria behind Liberal Henry Bolte, who ruled for 17 years until 1972.

When considering who is the most significant Victorian leader since World War II, think about the enormity of the challenges facing Andrews in the midst of the pandemic, even if some of those challenges were own goals.

Anyone wanting evidence of the bitter Victorian divide should have been in Crown casino at 1.20pm for the Carbine Club grand final week function on Tuesday.

Eddie McGuire broke the news to 900 or so mainly old blokes who roared with approval. No doubt there were many who kept their Labor allegiances to themselves.

This is the thing about Andrews, the people who voted for him often kept their counsel, making it even harder for the Liberal Party to know where to look.

He was an all-or-nothing leader.

The history books will rightly question the absurdity of some of the pandemic restrictions but in many ways they define his premiership style.

Andrews was always excessive.

In some ways like former Liberal leader Jeff Kennett, but on money, the pair were polar opposites.

Kennett valued every cent, but Andrews believed that taxpayers’ money was there to be spent on assets, wages and, frankly, for base political purposes

To those in the know, it was a matter of when he went rather than if but

the Dan Andrews departure still ends in an earthquake.

It will change the course of Victorian affairs in the short, medium and long term and gives the state Coalition an enormous opportunity to rebuild its stocks.

The assumed replacement, deputy premier Jacinta Allan, will have a terrible task trying to manage the fiscal fallout if she is handed the chalice.

After bungling the Commonwealth Games bid, Victorians were given rare insight into how not to run efficient government, an issue that raised its head during the pandemic response.

From start to finish, the bid was catastrophic.

It also showed in sharp relief, the role of his anticipated replacement.

Allan was charged with delivering the games and did a terrible job. Not even the Victorian Liberal Party could miss this political opportunity.

Allan was also at the heart of virtually every facet of the so-called big build, which is a series of major projects across Victoria that have suffered enormous blowouts.

Allan must decide what sort of government she wants to run and whether she wants to keep roaring down the debt road. Assuming she gets the big job.

More broadly, it will take months to unpack the impact that Andrews had on the national debate, for better and for worse.

He poured a lot of concrete and the zeal with which he pursued some policies was copied around the country, just as the campaigning techniques will be during the next decade.

Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan must decide whether she wants to keep roaring down the debt road. Picture: Mark Stewart

Euthanasia, which started in Victoria under Andrews, spread like a fire around the country. It is arguably the most significant social reform for generations.

He favoured unions that could help him and oversaw an administration that was relentlessly accused of lacking integrity. For all the mud thrown at him, nothing terminal landed in Andrews’ lap.

Perhaps his luckiest turn of fate was the political incompetence of the Liberal Party; he leaves with the Victorian Liberal Party on its knees.

It will be hard for the right to rebuild but, ironically, Andrews’ passing will provide opposition leader John Pesutto with the clearest run possible.

A new, compromised Labor leader with a whole lot of Andrews baggage.

It can’t be that hard.