Bile designed to blacken and banish Rudd

THE "wall of thunder" onslaught against Kevin Rudd is not just to ensure Julia Gillard's win in the leadership ballot but to blacken Rudd's reputation forever.

Pro-Gillard ministers, in effect, have vetoed Rudd's return. The personal vitriol in their remarks is calculated - the aim is to convince caucus that Rudd's return is untenable and alert the public to Rudd's hidden demons that caused his 2010 removal.

The real message is that Rudd cannot unite the party and cannot stabilise the government. In this context, Rudd's popularity is not enough if the party is broken within.

The price for Labor of re-electing Rudd has now become a serious internal convulsion with Gillard and Wayne Swan both on the backbench. Other ministers, given their remarks, cannot credibly serve in a Rudd ministry.

Yet a re-elected Gillard must be weakened with a range of ministers now declaring for Rudd, openly exposing their lack of confidence in the Prime Minister. There is no way Labor's divisions under Gillard can be healed.

In short, Labor faces a double jeopardy trap: this contest risks damaging Rudd's standing while any Gillard recovery remains an even more forlorn prospect.

It is unique in its personal ferocity. The Rudd-Gillard political relationship is finished. They will never serve together in another ALP government. The reason for ferocity is because the central argument of the Gillard camp is about character - they say Rudd is unfit to be prime minister. They have written Tony Abbott a campaign script if Rudd prevails.

The danger for Gillard's camp is that its overkill becomes counter-productive. It was diluting the acid yesterday as Therese Rein emerged on cue to talk of her love for Kevin.

Yet overkill usually works in these contests: witness "Black" Jack McEwen's ruthless 1967 veto of Billy McMahon after Harold Holt's drowning and Malcolm Fraser's 1971 destruction of John Gorton on character grounds.

Gillard has two aims: to beat Rudd on the numbers in the partyroom and to cripple his ability to duplicate Paul Keating's 1991 two-challenge success against Bob Hawke.

Confident of her numbers, Gillard wants Monday's ballot to settle the issue while the Rudd forces plan a two-strike strategy.

Yet direct comparisons with the Keating challenge are false. Hawke was a popular leader and Gillard is now highly unpopular. If Rudd cannot summon the numbers now after eight months of the Labor primary vote in the 28-33 per cent range, then it is far from obvious he will muster them in another six months.

The issue is whether the Gillard camp has created an anti-Rudd narrative that transcends the normal pressures arising from polls and threats to marginal seat members.

Most conspicuous was the statement from the Treasurer, a searing attack on Rudd's character and his fitness to lead the party. This reflects a well of anger towards Rudd over what senior figures believe was his sabotage of the 2010 campaign and over his campaign to return as prime minister.

Labor is trapped in two worlds: its internal world where Gillard is still supreme and its external world where voters favour Rudd.

Gillard's heroics that she can recover to defeat Tony Abbott are disbelieved by a majority of the caucus, yet her ability to deny Rudd should not be underestimated.

How viable is a Rudd government with Gillard and Swan on the backbench and many ministers having declared Rudd a dysfunctional leader?

What sort of new pressures would the independents face if they merely insisted on signing a new deal with Rudd rather than a general election?

Given this open warfare, there is now a mutual compulsion in the Gillard and Rudd camps to reveal the dark secrets about each other. This flows from the explosive events of June 2010, with both sides now having turned this into a saga of betrayal. It will endure far beyond next Monday's vote.