bolt on gillard

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

Is Julia Gillard finished?

Andrew Bolt ? Friday, November 12, 10 (04:40 pm)
I?m told she?s smart enough to recover. I?m told that she?s just waiting until the Senate changes next July to unleash. I?m told that she just needs a Christmas break to refresh after an utterly grueling year.

And yet?


- Labor under Gillard has fallen from 55 per cent in the polls at the start of the electon campaign to 48 per cent (2pp) now

- Gillard?s disapproval rating now equals her approval (41 per cent) in Newspoll, close to the levels where recovery starts to become very hard.

- Her signature promises are all in diabolical strife - the emissions trading scheme (doomed), cash for clunkers (doomed), the new mining tax (so bungled that it will leave a Budget black hole yet to be revealed), the East Timor detention centre (doomed), the Epping rail line (in doubt after the state election), a balanced budget in three years (dubious), her Citizens Assembly (abandoned), her no-carbon-tax promise (almost sure to be broken) and the national broadband scheme (increasingly incredible). That is an astonishing failure rate in just four months, and reflects very poor judgment and worse leadership.

- A lack of policy ideas is creating a vacuum being filled mainly be the Greens, making Labor seem insipid and directionless.

- Leading factional figures and party heavies are publicly demanding vision, deploring the drift or criticising Gillard?s mistakes - Graham Richardson, Karl Bitar, John Faulkner, Doug Cameron, Mark Arbib.

- Gillard is unable to point to a single policy breakthrough to set aside the reverses and demonstrate her potential.

- Her one attempt to show ?vision? - promising to rewrite the preamble to Constitution to acknowledge our ?first peoples? - instead advertised a lack of it, being rushed, purely symbolic and shopsoiled.

- The High Court?s decision on Christmas Island will further undermine and draw attention to her already failed boat people policy, fast becoming a big political problem.

- Many of those most responsible for installing Gillard have personal reasons for not wanting to prop her up, starting with her now chief rival, Bill Shorten.

- One of the few adults in Cabinet on whom she could rely, Martin Ferguson, is now rumored to be ready to retire before or at the next election.

- One of the big weaknesses of the Rudd Government, Treasurer Wayen Swan, remains a weakness under Gillard.

- Gillard?s ability to reinvent herself is limited since she announced she was unveiling the ?real Julia?, which will make any subsequent and dramatically different versions seem fakery.

- Cash is now very short for any eye-catching new agenda that requires money, and Gillard?s courage for real agenda-setting, which almost invariably attracts screams of outrage, seems missing. Would she really dare tackle what I think could actually help her and be both relatively cheap and consistent with her warmist preaching -give the green light to nuclear power and set a carbon tax just high enough to encourage it?

It?s true that I?ve focussed only on the negatives and that Gillard also has some positives. She?s smart and ruthless, and the Opposition has at times been ragged and undisciplined in its attacks. Many in the Labor party will also be very wary of repeating the NSW experience of churning through leaders to stave off falling polls, although some will argue that this churn is precisely what helped NSW Labor win so many elections in a row.

Yet I?d tentatively conclude that Gillard is right on the cusp. One more bad poll and the drums will really start beating. But even now the early signs are that her trajectory is downwards, and dangerously so.