The Latham Diaries
Early December two years ago I said;
If Martin Luther King had a dream, I have nightmare. Latham leading Australia to insignificence via embarrassment. I accept youth , vigour and aggression but the subject has to be house trained first.Nothing has happened since that day to change my mind. Latham was so second class I can only imagine most of the decent men in the ALP squirm when they think how they were snowballed into electing Latham as their leader. His schoolboy utterences when he was leader are now being recycled without the benefit of any external editing. With vitriol in spades he attacks everyone he ever met, but whereas I don’t think the ALP team are winners, at least they are house trained. A failed experiment, a blot on our history and an embarrassment. The press need to stop giving him oxygen – just let the whirlpool in his own small mind screw him from the scene forever.
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I disagree that Latham was a blot on our history – a rabid, populist ‘leader’, who was offering to dispense cash
by the bucketload and we not only said no, we comprehensively rejected his policies and sent him packing.
In many ways it was our finest hour.
Agreed Harry, it was our finest hour but the fact that a major player in Aussie politics, the ALP, and the media seriously considered him as an alternative to Howard, to me is the embarrassment.
Yes, there was that awful sense of looking in the mirror: I have seen the enemy, and he is us. Now we can look again and think, there but for the grace of god and the commonsense of the electorate. For all that, much of his own (reported) commentary has some shred of truth–Rudd as commentator addicted to the press, for example–but his analysis and conclusions that are wildly, often bizarrely wrong. Which makes me thinks twice about my earlier support for Julia Gillard as having potential as a future ALP leader.
Should the press give him oxygen? Amusingly, it exposes their own fantasy world. But also, my sense if that the ALP is mired in such inward-looking disrepair that perhaps only a system shock could save it, if it doesn’t kill it.
I can see your point Kev, but I think it just shows how disconnected the ALP and the Press (ie the left side of politics) has become from the average Australian.
The ALP and the press have a LOT to be embarrassed about, not us.
Kev, this will be all over with in a week or two, and then Latham will have to go back to being
just about the only one who cares what he thinks.
He has set himself up for a miseable life.
Great book – a good read. I bought a copy on Monday. Unique inside view of the inner workings of the ALP. Demonstrates how shallow Australian politics and the media are.
I don’t know who to hate the most politicians or journalists.
I had a good laugh about the incident involving Wayne Swan throwing a tantrum and crushing his daughter between two compactus filing cabinets. It’s a shame kids can’t choose their parents.
The incident where kevin Rudd is fed horseshit about confidential ALP research on Iraq and Rudd faithfully regurgitates the whole story word for word to Laurie Oakes is also a gem.
Speaking of handshakes Laurie Oakes has the most limp wristed handshake of any man I have ever met.