Janet Albrechtsen, chairman Rudd and why hospital cleaners don't belong in the Labor party ...

(Above: illustration for a story on why the unions and the Labor party must part, here. Everything changes so it can stay the same).

There's nothing more splendid or joyous than a commentariat commentator celebrating the tribal affinities of the Labor party, and revelling in its traditions.

Enter stage right, squawking noisily, Janet Albrechtsen, scribbling Lonely PM is not life of the party.

The object of the exercise of course is to trash Chairman Rudd. The central thesis is that he's a lonely loner, an outsider outside Labor culture, who didn't turn up to John Button's funeral and therefore deserves to spend time in one of the outer rings of Dante's hell.

But it's the ornamental filigree and Victorian balastrades erected on top of the simple structure that provide the real fun.

What on earth must Greg Combet, Bill Shorten and Stephen Smith make of Rudd's trashing of Labor's culture and brand in so short a time? Is Rudd the sort of leader you go down with on a sinking ship? Here's a clue. They may have privately jumped ship along with former Hawke ministers Peter Walsh, Graham Richardson and former Queensland treasurer Keith De Lacy.

Yep, Peter Walsh as one of the guardians of the light on the hill.

Would that happen to be the one and the same mad as a cut snake founding member of the Lavoisier Group? Their web site is kinda quiet these days, but Walsh left the Labor party faithful long ago to turn columnist for various papers, to denounce climate change theories, bleeding heart aboriginal reconciliation and anything else that offended his neo-conservative theology.

The idea that he's jumped ship of late or is an inspiration to ship jumpers everywhere could be called disingenuous, but mostly is a tremendous hoot, as Walsh can always be relied upon by The Australian to sink in the slipper and deliver the boot to Labor, under the guise of once having been Labor (and sure enough that's why you can read Top Labor reformer Peter Walsh lashes PM Kevin Rudd in The Oz as he goes in for a bit of eel bashing on behalf of the miners).

But things get really jocular when Albrechtsen drags in Graham Richardson as a guardian of the light on the hill. What to say about Gra Gra that wouldn't be defamatory and involve a visit from a lawyer funded by a Swiss bank account?

Perhaps that's why Richo's wiki entry is a little light on, though it will point you to sundry scandals. Still I guess it's one step up from Brian Burke if you wanted some political insights and analysis free of the taint of bovver boy tactics. Let's just let it lie with one of his greatest insights:

You have to lie to keep your job. If you have to lie, it is probably a good system.

Moving right along, we come to Keith De Lacy as another guardian of the light on the hill, shocked by Rudd's stepping outside of the Labor tradition.

Not that the former Queensland treasurer has any conflict of interest in sundry matters, nor could anyone argue that he's stopped being a Labor mate by getting the nod as chairman of the miner Macarthur Coal. After all, if snouts in trough ain't the main aim of government, what's the point? That's why you can find De Lacy bleating about Copenhagen and Chairman Rudd and dinkum Aussie coal back in December last year in Time to rethink, coal chief Keith De Lacy tells 'mate' Kevin Rudd.

Yep, a climate change ratbag, and a political rogue and a coal chief are all first class Labor in Albrechtsen's world, while Chairman Rudd is just an outsider:

When he was a new MP in Canberra, Rudd's colleagues wondered where did he fit? The answer is he doesn't. He's not old working-class Labor. He's not new Labor class. He's not really Labor at all.

Rudd is a bureaucrat who could just as easily prosecute any side of an argument using overblown rhetoric to hide his cold detachment.

Cold detachment! Not Labor at all! Oh the gruesome fiend, and worse still, he went off to celebrate the arrival of a life with a film star rather than attending a funeral to send off a Labor man, though the view might be taken that a few moments with the man before he kicked the bucket might be a more meaningful indication of a personal relationship.

Of course any other day of the week, Albrechtsen would be scribbling furiously about the internal culture of the Labor party, and its in-bred reliance on the concept of mateship and the Masonic rituals of the brotherhood (with sisterhood a late arriving phenomenon).

Not so this week, because it spells doom for Chairman Rudd. You see, he didn't maintain the rage:

... Rudd was never part of Labor's natural order. There is no history of Labor in his blood. No steaming Labor passions. He told David Marr that when he heard of Gough Whitlam's dismissal on November 11, 1975, he leaned briefly on his mop, then returned to cleaning the floor of Canterbury hospital. As Marr writes in the latest Quarterly Essay under the heading "Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd", as a university student "Rudd did not lift a finger for Labor in the high political excitement of Malcolm Fraser's early years". No protest marches against John Kerr. No manning the booths in '77 or '80. Rudd entered federal parliament as a Labor blow-in. Sure, he worked in Queensland for premier Wayne Goss, but it was just a job, like mopping the hospital floors.

Oh the callous inhuman fiend, and defier of tradition. Posing with a floor mop when he should have been out on the streets. Come to think of it, unless you join the Labor party at age two, you can never be true Labor.

What to make of this panegryic?

That's the thing about Labor. Everyone fits in somewhere. Old Labor or New Labor. The Left or the Right. Labor seeds, grows and backs its own. Especially when they are in a corner.

Sure, sure, there aren't any rats in the ranks, it's all solid comrade this and brother that, and once you've stepped away from the brotherhood, you're nothing, nothing at all.

Rudd is in a corner now. He is running up against Labor history, discovering that, as one pundit observed, he sits atop a pillar, not the Giza-sized pyramid that supported John Howard or Keating when they were in political dire straits. Rudd's leaning Tower of Pisa totters in the poll winds. He has no credits he can call on for favours done or loyalty given.

Power, not Labor, courses through Rudd's veins. He wrenched control from the caucus when he became Prime Minister and, while a grateful ALP acceded, Rudd's power trip did not end there.

Yep, I had to include that, just for the sheer joy of reading about the Giza-sized pyramid that supported Paul Keating. Is it just because people forget political history and the newspaper headlines of the day that commentariat columnists can write this kind of guff and get away with it? Dearie me, were the rats out in force in the last days of the Keating regime.

It goes without saying that power doesn't course through the veins of any other Prime Minister, none of whom were on a power trip, and none of whom wrenched the controls away from anyone else. Paul Keating is a shining example of that insight, as is John Howard, and shush now, no mention of Bob Hawke or Andrew Peacock as we brandish the insight for all to see.

Hosannah, the Albrechsten has sung the wisdom of the ages.

Wimpery and do gooder caringness and lovingness, not power courses through any Prime Minister's veins. They wrenched control from the the underlings when they become Prime Minister because they care and love and give and suffer so much, and, while the grateful underlings accede, Prime Ministerial power trips are only so they can do good for all.

But as we mentioned at the beginning all this guff is actually all window dressing, a charade, a fancy dress costume of paraded innuendoes from a scribbler who doesn't seem to have the first clue about either the broad church of the Labor party or Labor party politicians. It's really just a chance to vent the spleen, a piece of vindictive back stabbing:

Real political passions burn long and hard. Losses leave scars. Hayden, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Costello. In their own way, all will have felt profoundly injured when they left politics. Rudd? Whether he loses at the coming election or is evicted from the Lodge by Labor before or afterwards, you get the sense that the lonely Labor locum will just move on to the next gig. It's just a job after all. Like mopping the floors at Canterbury hospital.

Ah, there you have it, the final clue. So much for the workers. Just doing jobs. Like mopping floors. Can you feel the withering contempt for Rudd ... and for workers doing an honest day's work?

You know, I happen to think cleaners do a useful job of work in hospitals. After all with golden staph lurking, and the chance of infections spreading, and doctors and nurses needing to be encouraged to wash their hands between patients, what could be a more noble symbol of the desire to keep hospitals clean than a cleaner? (Calls for action as 'golden staph' kills one in five patients).

Not so for Albrechtsen. For her, jobs are just jobs, and cleaners mopping the floors are just a joke, a way of stabbing Chairman Rudd. Well between Rudd's notion of Labor, and Albrechtsen's, one thing's clear. At least he's mopped a floor or two, while she spends her time bashing away at a keyboard for an obscene amount of cash ...

And one's honest work, and the other is just a kind of dissembling ...

Meanwhile, if you want a more interesting analysis of Rudd's leadership, head off to Ross Gittins and Wanted: some belief in a leader. At least he avoids meretricious nonsense and specious claptrap ... perhaps he's also mopped a floor or two. (And yes, I've also worked as a cleaner, and still appreciate the work of people who keep things clean).

And one final alarming thought. When Chairman Rudd moves on, as he inevitably will, because that's what happens to lands at the top of the faraway tree, there's only one job he might take that truly terrifies me.

That he ends up lonely, forlorn and bitter loner scribbling commentary for a rag like The Australian or the Australian Financial Review or the SMH, and so become comrade in pen with Albrechtsen ... like Mark Latham, or John Hewson, or Michael Costa ...

Take a job as a hospital cleaner Kev, anything but that ...

(Below: but it wouldn't be fun if we didn't think back to the light on the hill, and how you might gain membership of the elite insider Labor club, and who better to explain than Monty Python?)