John Howard’s ‘seniors’ moment’ on ABC radio yesterday will no doubt have a number of Liberal backbenchers wondering what might have been. It’s 12 months since Peter Costello came oh-so- close to challenging Howard’s leadership and, with the opinion polls continuing to predict a Labor victory at the coming election, the question has to be asked - did the Libs miss their one chance at installing a leader who could thwart the rise of Kevinism?
For a hint of what could have been, we need only look to Britain and the turnaround the Labour party has enjoyed since Gordon Brown moved into No. 10.
This week, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Applebaum described the post-Blair climate change for Slate.com. Prior to Blair's departure the Labour party was seriously on the nose with voters, but Brown's ascension to PM has demonstrated that much of the animosity towards Labour was aimed squarely at Blair.
As Applebaum says, "Brown isn’t exactly a new face. He had been the second-most-important person in Britain for the past decade and is held responsible for almost all the Labour government’s domestic economic decisions….and although he should rightly be identified with every unpopular decision Blair ever made, Brown is now going out of his way to sound as un-Blair-like as possible"
And it seems to have worked.
Only days after Brown moved into No. 10, a poll conducted for The Guardian showed a stunning seven-point bounce in Labour’s satisfaction rating. And, while it would be easy to discount the result as a honeymoon poll, Brown is working hard to convince the electorate that Labour is different under his stewardship
It’s the same tactic that helped Nicolas Sarkozy succeed the deeply unpopular French President Jacques Chirac. Despite the fact he had been an important part of Chirac’s UMP government, Sarkozy successfully distanced himself from his predecessors more unpopular decisions during the election campaign and managed to convince voters that he was different.
Peter Costello could have presented himself to the electorate in a similar manner. A steady pair of hands with experience in government, but different enough from Howard to make it seem like a change of government had already occurred.
If the opinion polls are right then Peter Costello won't be the only one ruing a missed opportunity come election night.
[17/7/07 - Dennis Shanahan reports in The Australian today that Howard asked the party room if they thought he was the reason for the coalitions poor poll numbers. There is no suggestion that Costello is orchestrating a challenge, but this issue will continue to dog the Libs until election day.]
This item was edited/updated on 17/7/07
[25/7/07 - Paul Kelly, in The Australian, can't see the Liberal leadership changing this close to the election, despite renewed speculation of tension between Howard and Costello.]
[15/8/07 - This issue continues to haunt the coalition with renewed speculation over the Liberal leadership and new claims that in 2005 Costello vowed to challenge Howard. This is an issue that is unlikely to resolve itself before the election, but do voters really care?]
1 comment:
I'm not sure whether a Howard-Costello handover before the upcoming election would have the same positive affects as the recent Blair-Brown switch.
From my impression of the last 12 months over in the Motherland, British voters (and, more significantly, the press) turned against Tony Blair, as opposed to the Labour Party/Government. The anger and disappointment directed towards Blair caused the popularity of the Government to plummet. There was never a widespread backlash against Brown and the rest of the Labour Government (don't forget that many members of the Government also publically voiced their frustrations with Blair).
In Australia, however, it seems to be the other way around. People (and the media) have started to tire of the Coalition Government. I dont think the electorate has all-of-a-sudden become overtly anti-Howard. The PM still appears to be a popular figure among the masses. In fact, in yesterday's Newspoll 46% of the people interviewed thought Howard was doing a good job. That's a fair chunk of people (especially considering he's been PM for 11 years now and has managed to keep almost half of the electorate happy). The Government (Downer, Nelson, Abbott, Heffernan et al and, yes, Costello) have become stale and people seem to want something new (no matter how untried and inexperienced that 'something new' is). I think it's the current government, with the same old faces) that people are bored with, and a change of leader would not change squat.
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