The great British political diarist Alan Clark said there are no true friends in politics as ambition almost always trumps loyalty. “We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water,” he wrote in 1990.
Anthony Albanese is surrounded by sharks. The three most likely Labor leadership contenders — Chris Bowen, Jim Chalmers and Tanya Plibersek — are ready to strike if they see a clear pathway to the leadership. Richard Marles and Tony Burke have made it clear to colleagues they, too, should not be ruled out.
The problem is they are all reluctant to challenge for fear of being branded a wrecker, with their leadership crippled from the start, or failing to succeed and being banished to the backbench. If they did become leader, they would be blamed if Labor lost the election anyway. That is why there is another name being talked about: Bill Shorten.
Shorten has told colleagues he will not be a candidate when the leadership next becomes vacant. He has also made it clear he thinks Plibersek, his former deputy, should take the top job. But he has been told to rethink his plans by Labor MPs. He may need to be drafted, as they say, to “save the furniture”.
It sounds crazy but they see logic in it. Shorten needs no time getting up to speed. He is well known. He can say he has learnt from his previous stint as leader. He can quickly assemble a team. He is an energetic campaigner and media performer. And, obviously, he won every seat the party currently holds. Kevin Rudd and Kim Beazley came back.
What is certain is that Labor remains demoralised and disillusioned with Albanese and several leadership hopefuls are keeping their options open. None of them has privately ruled out running for leader this side of the election. And there are some in caucus who want to force a leadership showdown in the next few months.
As Labor MPs retreated home for the holidays last year, there was a near universal view that things had to change. As Labor MPs return to parliament this week, there is probably a majority who now realise what needs to change: the leader. But Albanese will never resign so a range of options is being discussed, such as a stalking horse challenger to force a leadership ballot or a confidence motion being moved in caucus.
What Labor MPs fear is not just losing the next election — they are accustomed to losing elections — it is going backwards and losing seats. This is what is in prospect. MPs, shadow ministers, party officials, union leaders, staffers and rank-and-file members all say this. They cannot imagine an election victory with Albanese as leader.
The 20 months of Albanese’s leadership have been wasted. He is strategically inept and policy-barren. He lacks the critical thinking skills to be a successful leader. He lacks the intellect and the imagination to reinvent Labor. MPs say he lacks the motivation and ambition required to be prime minister. He is, in a word, lacklustre.
Since the last election, there has been no overhaul of Labor’s philosophy, no refreshing of party principles or modernisation of enduring values. Every successful leader has done this. Nobody knows what Labor stands for, what it wants to achieve or who it represents. The party faces an existential crisis yet Albanese has done nothing to address it.
Nor has there been any attempt to make the party more democratic, transparent or accountable. There has been no opening up of party structures. No attempt to recruit new members. No change to internal policy-making processes that have proven defective in recent years. Albanese cancelled Labor’s national conference last year when it could have been held online. That was also in the too-hard basket. And the party’s national secretariat is not campaign-ready.
It took Albanese until January this year to finally bury Labor’s disastrous franking credits policy — the so-called “retirees’ tax”. Worse, Labor has not yet dumped its policy to curb negative gearing or halve the capital gains tax deduction for mum-and-dad investors. These policies, which undermine Labor’s pitch to aspirational voters, remain.
The ham-fisted reshuffle of frontbench portfolios last week only served to inflame caucus tensions. Albanese dumped Mark Butler from the climate change portfolio after saying he never would. He gave Marles a comical rag-tag collection of portfolios. He stripped portfolios from Chalmers and Plibersek. It is still the B-team from the Rudd-Gillard years while talent languishes on the backbench.
There is little comfort for Albanese in the latest Newspoll, despite Labor and the Coalition drawing even on the two-party vote. Labor’s primary vote is stuck in the mid-30s.
Scott Morrison demolishes Albanese as preferred prime minister by a two-to-one margin. Morrison’s net approval is plus-30 per cent; Albanese’s is minus-2 per cent. Morrison outclasses Albanese in the leadership stakes.
Albanese likes to say he has already won the next election and will be prime minister. The overweening ego is a huge turn-off. Most leaders do not take voters for granted. Albanese also had the temerity to compare himself to Joe Biden, a lifelong moderate and centrist. Albanese has always been an inner-city hard-left factional warrior. Remember the selfies with Jeremy Corbyn? That is who he idolises.
Labor MPs think Morrison is vulnerable and the Coalition can be defeated at an election this year. But Albanese’s lone-ranger style and repeated slip-ups — such as urging Morrison to tell Donald Trump to respect the democratic process and advocating a referendum on constitutional recognition on Australia Day — have been ridiculed in Labor ranks. Albanese’s authority continues to ebb away.
“We’re cooked,” a frontbencher told me. “Albo just hasn’t done enough in the past 20 months. He’s hopeless. He doesn’t have the policy depth. He can’t cut through with voters. He doesn’t look like a PM. He just doesn’t have what it takes.”
So, the sharks circle.
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