We need to talk about Kevin

When former Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was brusquely usurped by the current incumbent, Julia Gillard, in June 2010, the story made international news. But it didn’t have much impact on the UK as, quite frankly, we were in the first full month of new coalition government and George Osborne was beginning to publicly announce his slash and burn agenda. Understandably, the British public had more pressing issues on their minds. However, now that Mr Rudd’s unconventional resignation as Australia’s Foreign Minister has sparked a bizarre course of events that will culminate in a leadership run off between him and Ms Gillard next Monday, it might prove useful for the British public, and indeed the British Labour Party, to sit up and see how things play out.

Having not been living in the UK since last September, I don’t know whether the public feels that Ed Miliband has turned around his fortunes to the extent that his party is assured of victory at the next election. My guess is this hasn’t happened. It’s also not beyond the realms of possibility that rumblings against Ed’s leadership will surface at some point before we next decide which party leader should form the next government. Labour Party members who don’t think Ed is up to much might want to hold back after they see the news reports now coming out of Australia, where two career politicians from the same ruling party are tearing their movement apart.

There is no doubt that Mr Rudd is a popular politician in Australia and has a groundswell of public support. However, it isn’t the public that will choose the Labor leader. It’s a caucus made up of Labor parliamentarians. He, his supporters and his wife are calling on Australian voters to lobby their local MPs over the weekend, ultimately persuading them to vote for him in Monday’s leadership ballot. But Mr Rudd and his supporters seem to have missed something fundamental: voters in a democracy chose people to represent them, but they themselves don’t have the power to vote in parliament or in this caucus vote. If Labor MPs think Mr Rudd is acting out of self importance and a sense of injustice, and not for the best interests of the country, why should they vote for him, however much the public like him?

The bitterness between Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard that has spilled out into the public domain over the past few days has distant echoes of the popularly reported feuds between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair during their respective stints at the helm of New Labour. Every person in the UK who regularly read a newspaper knew about the alleged ‘deal’, the broken promises and the warring factions. But the difference was that there was a discipline; a line that could not be crossed. The party came first, and although the two men and their factions may have warred behind the scenes, Gordon never publicly disowned Tony for his personal gain and to the inevitable detriment of New Labour.

Mr Rudd is said to have large core support in Queensland, his home constituency, but the vote on Monday will come from a caucus which has nothing to do with the public in his home state, or what they think of him. However, there are rumours that Mr Rudd will resign if he loses the leadership run off, and then Queenslanders would have their say. If they chose to teach the party a lesson and avenge their hero, it would leave Australia’s governing party without a majority. As it is, they only cling onto power because of an agreement with two independent MPs. So, either way Kevin wins but the party loses. If he regains the leadership, the venom directed at him by a substantial number of his colleagues in the past few days will be difficult to forget, weakening Labor’s chance of governing cohesively. If he loses, he can choose to relieve the bitterness of his personal demise by resigning and most likely force a snap election which his party would lose.

So, one thing is certain. Mr Rudd’s actions over the last few days have left the opposition party in Australia rubbing their hands with glee. However strongly the members and parliamentarians of the Labour Party in the UK still think David Miliband was robbed in September 2010, starting a campaign to oust his brother would inevitably damage the Labour movement. If you don’t believe me, follow the Australian news for the next few weeks.