Lonely PM is not life of the party

THE most potent clue to Kevin Rudd's future came from the most peculiar place last week. Not from former Labor ministers, former state treasurers, old Labor friends or unnamed Labor sources all critical of how quickly the Prime Minister has tarnished the Labor brand, not to mention the Australian economy.

In a strange intervention, Annie O'Rourke, the Prime Minister's former adviser, wrote a mea culpa explaining she was to blame for the PM's failure to attend the Melbourne funeral of Labor luminary John Button in 2008.

Anyone who understands the Australian Labor Party, its history, its culture, its rhythms, will understand that this is the most telling sign that the ALP is fed up with Rudd.

The slumbering Labor bear has woken and it's rumbling with wintry discontent.

What started as disdain for the way Rudd snubbed Button's memory has become deep-seated animosity. That's why O'Rourke entered the fray with lame explanations that the PM's meetings prevented him from flying to Melbourne for Button's funeral. The PM was also feeling flat, she said, and she thought a hospital visit to new mother Cate Blanchett was what he needed.

"The PM would get a boost from seeing a newborn baby. He adores them."

O'Rourke's excuse, which reads like a mother's note for a sooky child, will only pour salt on wounds. Other Labor ministers, backbenchers, former prime ministers and premiers cancelled meetings to attend the funeral. No one waits on a sofa for news to arrive that a funeral is on.

Choosing a movie star over a Labor star was classic Rudd. Blind to Labor traditions, Rudd signalled his contempt for the party's culture of revering its icons, for its long history of mateship born out of the 1890 strikes, for its tribal core of true believers where long service, loyalty, earn your stripes and take your turn count for much.

Rudd's cold shoulder to Button's memory disrupted the natural order of things in the ALP.

But, then, Rudd was never part of Labor's natural order. There is no history of Labor in his blood. No steaming Labor passions. He told David Marr that when he heard of Gough Whitlam's dismissal on November 11, 1975, he leaned briefly on his mop, then returned to cleaning the floor of Canterbury hospital. As Marr writes in the latest Quarterly Essay under the heading "Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd", as a university student "Rudd did not lift a finger for Labor in the high political excitement of Malcolm Fraser's early years". No protest marches against John Kerr. No manning the booths in '77 or '80. Rudd entered federal parliament as a Labor blow-in. Sure, he worked in Queensland for premier Wayne Goss, but it was just a job, like mopping the hospital floors.

The ALP is a tribal beast. The cleanskin routine worked for Rudd in 2007. Now Rudd is discovering the cost of not being part of the tribe.

Queue jumpers are not welcome. Unknowns are for Australian Idol, not the ALP. Labor friendships - and hatreds - are decades old.

The party will eulogise men such as train driver Ben Chifley, men such as John Curtin and Paul Keating who left school at 14 and 15, feisty union leaders such as Bob Hawke, even flawed visionaries such as Whitlam. And Button. All men with Labor pulsing through their veins.

That's the thing about Labor. Everyone fits in somewhere. Old Labor or New Labor. The Left or the Right. Labor seeds, grows and backs its own. Especially when they are in a corner. Rudd is in a corner now. He is running up against Labor history, discovering that, as one pundit observed, he sits atop a pillar, not the Giza-sized pyramid that supported John Howard or Keating when they were in political dire straits. Rudd's leaning Tower of Pisa totters in the poll winds. He has no credits he can call on for favours done or loyalty given.

Power, not Labor, courses through Rudd's veins. He wrenched control from the caucus when he became Prime Minister and, while a grateful ALP acceded, Rudd's power trip did not end there.

Rudd's "community cabinet" meetings must surely grate with the Canberra cabinet. Maxine McKew politely described them as the Prime Minister's pursuit of direct democracy. Pull the other one, Maxine. Rudd doesn't even consult his real cabinet let alone community shindigs conceived for Rudd worship.

What on earth must Greg Combet, Bill Shorten and Stephen Smith make of Rudd's trashing of Labor's culture and brand in so short a time? Is Rudd the sort of leader you go down with on a sinking ship? Here's a clue. They may have privately jumped ship along with former Hawke ministers Peter Walsh, Graham Richardson and former Queensland treasurer Keith De Lacy. Not to mention Labor mates such as Rod Eddington, John Singleton and Lindsay Fox. Many more are also asking how it is that Australia, with its reputation for sensible economic reform, now has sovereign risk attached to its name? Why isn't it being fixed quickly? "The obstacle is Rudd," said Walsh. When Simon Crean dumped on Rudd a few days later, it became clear that traditional Labor is flexing its muscle, trying to restore the natural order of things and regain the soul of the party from a drop-in leader who hasn't risen to the occasion.

When he was a new MP in Canberra, Rudd's colleagues wondered where did he fit? The answer is he doesn't. He's not old working-class Labor. He's not new Labor class. He's not really Labor at all.

Rudd is a bureaucrat who could just as easily prosecute any side of an argument using overblown rhetoric to hide his cold detachment.

How precarious is Rudd's position? So precarious that he now needs a public explanation of his failure to attend a funeral more than two years ago. That single intervention suggests that internal Labor conversations about Rudd go something like this. They might mention the PM's pushy nature, his imperious manner, his snubbing of cabinet, his phony colloquialisms, his bureaucratic logorrhoea, his backdowns, botched policies and broken promises.

And then it ends: "And the bastard didn't even attend Button's funeral." Naturally, replace "bastard" with any four-letter Labor expletive of choice.

Real political passions burn long and hard. Losses leave scars. Hayden, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Costello. In their own way, all will have felt profoundly injured when they left politics. Rudd? Whether he loses at the coming election or is evicted from the Lodge by Labor before or afterwards, you get the sense that the lonely Labor locum will just move on to the next gig. It's just a job after all. Like mopping the floors at Canterbury hospital.

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