Gillard calls leadership spill on State of Origin night

Cartoon: By Bill Leak

In her typical ham fisted and inconsiderate manner the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has called for a ballot on the Labor leadership on State of Origin night when everyone but deadshit politicians have better things to do than watch the death those of the government.

Essentially she is hoping to short circuit the Rudd challenge before he is ready, or at least try to deny further waverers the time to abandon ship: 

The Prime Minister has called a leadership spill for 7pm in an attempt to finish off Kevin Rudd's political career once and for all. 

Mr Rudd said he had been convinced to stand by colleagues and at the urging of tens of thousands of Australians who were afraid of what an Abbott government would do, including reviving Work Choices under another name. … 

… The Prime Minister has demanded the loser of the ballot must resign from parliament to resolve Labor's leadership crisis once and for all. ''I believe anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following condition,'' she told Sky News. 

''If you win you are Labor leader. If you lose, you retire from politics.”

The writing has been on the wall for Gillard for a long time, becoming bold with the failure of her last attempt at recreating her gender war.  It adopted a larger font on Monday with a disastrous showing in opinion polls, then went all caps after the ludicrous kangaroo knitting farce yesterday.

This ‘photo op’ has been such an embarrassment that both the woman’s Weekly and the Gillard camp are blaming each other for coming up with the idea. 

Both Rudd and Gillard are currently on television claiming that each has to do this because of Tony Abbott.

It will be a great disappointment if Gillard loses as we have all been waiting to toss her out ourselves in September.  Tossing Rudd out will be something of a consolation but not as satisfying as ridding ourselves of our tormentor.