“Always forgive your enemies,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “nothing annoys them so much”. And no advice could be more prescient for Kevin Rudd, who must be feeling positively Churchillian at the prospect of being drafted back in to the Labor leadership.
The former ALP headkicker Graham Richardson, who is by his own admission more of an outsider these days than an insider, has claimed that Victorian backbencher Alan Griffin and West Australian senator Mark Bishop are running the numbers for Mr Rudd.
Commenting on the suggestion, the former PM mixed requisite denial with a rather heavy dose of aggression, attacking “factional bullies” and taking every opportunity to put the focus back on Tony Abbott. He is, quite literally, on the campaign trail – but the electorate is only an afterthought here. The voters that matter are in caucus.
While it is easy to dismiss such reports as the conjecture of a blood-thirsty media or a faded powerbroker, there is a pretty clear trajectory here. Only a fortnight ago we were told that Rudd was nine votes short of returning to the penthouse. Make no mistake – this will happen. Remember that in June last year, Rudd was so thoroughly despised within caucus that he didn’t even contest the leadership ballot. Clearly, many of those enemies have changed their minds.
Numbers like Rudd’s will do that, and they can only be ignored for so long. Only the most stubbornly proud could refuse a 15-point jump in the primary vote. And when push comes to shove, most MPs will shelve their pride to keep their jobs.
Many among the commentariat seem decidedly cynical about whether a challenge will take place, though there’s certainly no reluctance to egg it on. Of course the daily doorstops feature valiant denials that the numbers are being run, but we know how little weight to assign such protests. And there is actually a rather beautiful strategy waiting to be executed, if they’d just hurry up and pull the trigger.
The crowd loves an act of contrition, something Rudd demonstrated himself when he apologised to the stolen generations on the floor of the House. Parents since time immemorial have insisted on the moral lesson that saying sorry – and admitting to a mistake, pertinently – is a necessary condition of making things right again.
The opportunity is there for a grand mea culpa from Labor, to state what is now undeniable – that to remove Rudd was wrong, not just politically but also morally. That to do such a thing to a first-term Prime Minister undermined the office itself, much more so than a few crass signs at a rally or the tragically unfunny At Home with Julia.
Gillard will need to lead the procession, of course, for however unwillingly she was coerced in to the act she remains the knife’s wielder. It will be a media-managed affair, though not too stringently one hopes. The cameras need to show us the regret etched in her face, much the same way as they captured those humanising tears rolling down Rudd’s cheek in the aftermath of his ousting.
The so-called faceless men should be there too; the likes of Mark Arbib, David Feeney and Don Farrell, who will demonstrate that they are not masked assassins but merely humans, with fatally human flaws of judgment. They can admit to being disillusioned and disappointed by Rudd’s leadership, but say they should have kept the faith and given him the dignity of an election campaign.
These sentiments will need to be explicitly communicated, for it is important that voters see a return to Rudd as an act of reparation not desperation. Neither should that necessarily be seen as ‘spin’ – Labor is genuinely beginning to feel that promoting Gillard before her time was an error which should be corrected.
Rudd too will need to display his catharsis. He will need to admit that his first stint as leader was problematic, that he was a poor manager and bad colleague. Most importantly he will need to promise he has learnt his lessons, that things will be different this time around. Privately he has probably given those guarantees already. They should be given to the public, as well, to complete the circle of contrition.
He has already admitted it was the wrong call to junk the emissions trading scheme. Upon his second-coming he can accurately say that the ALP is once again committed to an ETS, which is exactly what the alleged ‘carbon tax’ will become after three years. Rudd owns the ETS trademark, Gillard doesn’t.
There must be visible forgiveness, too, lest the news cycle again become fixated on displays of frostiness between the two like that dreadful orchestrated encounter during the election campaign. As Ghandi attested, forgiveness is the attribute of the strong, and both will be stronger leaders having accepted each other’s mistakes.
The politics of apology is an important game to understand. It is entirely analogous to the quarrelsome lovers who go to bed angry and remain so for days. Recognition of one’s wrongdoing has a calmative effect, giving people the comfort of believing the natural order of things is restored. Voters want to see that raw humanity in their leaders, the type of vulnerability and fallibility Rudd and Gillard have characteristically tried to hide.
The PM and the electorate slept as disgruntled bedfellows, and the rift has never mended. The only way to get past it is to go back, and for Labor’s catharsis to be painfully public. It worked for Ted Kennedy after he drove off a bridge and his passenger drowned. With the help of a dog called Checkers, it even worked for Richard Nixon.
Those caucus dominoes will not hesitate to fall.
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