There are large elements in the ALP who are all but begging the community to give it a spell in opposition so that it can do a bit of renewal. They do not want Rudd returned as Prime Minister and I am talking about former members of the cabinet and even about former leaders. What does Julia really think? She’s not saying but how hard is it to guess. But there in the AFR this weekend we find Mark Latham who is being as explicit as he could possibly be. He is here discussing how unfit to govern members of the Parliamentary members of the ALP are. This is what he wrote:

They saw issues as an exercise in ideological dogma, instead of problem-solving. Learning and adapting were foreign concepts.

And as much as it’s true about the Parliamentary party so much more is it true about those who will vote them back no matter what. The rustidons as one comment had it. What to they care about, jobs, education, health, border security or our future prosperity. Their self identity would disintegrate if they put a number n-1 against the name of a Coalition candidate with a Labor candidate at n. But to go back to Mark Latham again in his column, this is, I think, exactly right not just about many in the ALP’s Parliamentary party but about many of their supporters as well:

When the world fails to comply with its ideological template, it uses ignorance as a way of keeping its beliefs intact.

There are queues of disaffected Labor Party people who want supporters to walk away this time but these people won’t do it. They just won’t do it and they make up near on half the voters in the country.