The old firm is now entirely back in charge of the Labor Party. Not just Kim Beazley but the NSW Right. And Brian Bourke. And Joe Ludwig. The right-wing factions—after a year or two of destabilisation at both state and federal levels—have found some sense of purpose, and even some reasons for unity. Not because they have any agenda for what they might do with this power, or even, heaven help us, of winning real power, but because they like to be in control. With their man. Their way of doing things and of resolving things in the back rooms. Of dispensing favours and pre-selections, and of punishing enemies. The whole Mark Latham nightmare is over. We are back to normal, and, if normality means being with Labor’s greatest ever loser, so be it. There’s no one better around.
The Latham nightmare was not of his losing the election, though that was very careless of him. He had been given unusual leeway. Few had trusted his judgment, or his personal or political instincts, and everyone knew his weaknesses, though for a whole 13 months he had maintained a self-discipline that many who knew him well had believed impossible. He had been a gamble, and the gamble failed. Not only that, but after the election he had begun to deteriorate, and then to evaporate. Beazley supporters had been manoeuvring against him for months but not in a way so as to make his demise seem an assassination. It was necessary that Latham step over the cliff himself, or at least come to realise that he was standing in the air. His own maladroitness, and the incompetence of his deputy leader, as well, perhaps, as his illness made the terminal stages easy and the transition undramatic. Beazley wanted to be drafted. A few pests openly cocked their ears for the call; they were soon disabused of the idea that standing in the way of a restoration could give them a future.
The parallels with John Howard’s situation when, in 1995, the leadership of the Liberal Party was restored to him by draft, might seem obvious. But Howard had waited in the shadows, even to occasionally (and usually very disloyally) parading his superior leadership credentials because he had an agenda for government. The Liberals had flirted with new generations and new ideas and it had got them nothing. Howard had experience. He was predictable. Safe.