Thus Returns...

What to title this post?  "Attack of the Ruddbot"?  "The Ruddbot Strikes Back"?

No, I thought of an antique illustration of London in flames beneath an anarchist airship raining bombs upon the helpless populace – captioned "Thus returns Hartmann the Anarchist" (from E. D. Fawcett's 1893 novel Hartmann the Anarchist; or, The Doom of the Great City) – as the best, most apt image of the impending return to Australia of our just-resigned Foreign Minister, the aforementioned Ruddbot (as his pointy-headed character was satirized) who, coveting the Prime Ministership taken from him by his former Deputy, seeks to represent himself as the innocent, much-wronged white knight, alone able to deliver the nation and the Party from threats internal and external... when he himself is such a threat!  "Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

Narcissism, or Asperger's?  Rudd returns, declaring he had to resign since Gillard had no confidence in him - when in reality the lack of confidence was the other way around.  Our late F.M. (and still earlier P.M.) returns bearing gifts – gifts he no doubt wishes to share with us poor souls, groaning under Gillard's hapless rule; gifts including, as Blind Freddy would know, a nice knife in the back for her, one bad turn deserving another (as Saruman said).  Dear Kevin is known to present an oh-so-nice public persona, while being notoriously foul-mouthed and bad-tempered in private, brow-beating all and sundry (which goes a good way to explaining why he was dumped by his colleagues in favour of Julia Gillard back in mid-2010).

The Parliamentary Labor Party will meet on Monday morning to vote on the leadership thereof, and thus select he or she who would be the Prime Minister, if the shaky coalition of Labor plus cross-benchers and the Greens hold together much longer.  Surely Rudd can't win?  But Gillard is sorely wounded already in any case.  Would Rudd himself resign from Parliament?  Or take to the backbench (as Keating did to Hawke), there to carp and criticise and still further destroy?  But Kevin Rudd now reminds me far more of another former Labor leader, Mark Latham, whose love for the Party turned to hate, than of Paul Keating, a man much his superior in every respect.

I suspect that Rudd is indeed mad and self-centred enough, as proven by his destructive campaign of leaks against Gilllard during the last Federal Election and ever since, especially in the last weeks leading up to this strike against her, to destroy the Labor minority government if he fail to win back the Prime Ministership.  Better that all go down in flames to Hades, than his backstabbing successor stay in power!  

The same could happen if, as seems less likely, he surprises Gillard and wins the ballot: for there is at least one Labor M.P. on record as declaring repeatedly that, rather than have Rudd back as P.M., that M.P. will resign forthwith, bringing on the collapse of the Labor government and an early election. (However, I have since read that this threat was conveniently withdrawn only last week.)

We are left with the grossly disedifying spectacle of Gillard and Rudd locked in suicidal combat, tearing apart the Government in the process.  Narcissistic power-plays, ending in anarchy!