Tom Switzer

Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland podcast and co-editor, with Sue Windybank, of Prudence and Power: The Writings of Owen Harries.

Monday

Tom Switzer

Australia’s Labor party is infighting its way to an electoral hiding

From our UK edition

This morning a friend from London emailed to find out what the hell has happened to the Australian Labor Party? He was responding to the news overnight that, in a ballot for Labor’s 102-strong legislative caucus, Julia Gillard (the most unpopular prime minister in Australian history) smashed Kevin Rudd (the most popular prime minister in Australian history, whom she knifed late one night in June 2010) by a record 71 to 31 votes. ‘How can this be?’ my friend asked. Well, Rudd’s fall from grace has little to do with Gillard and everything to do with Rudd.

Wednesday

Tom Switzer

An Australian bloodbath

From our UK edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkutzX1CjCs Australian politics is all aflutter at the resignation of Kevin Rudd as Foreign Minister. What happens now? Will he challenge Julia Gillard for the job of Prime Minister? Here's tomorrow's leader from our sister magazine Spectator Australia (edited by Tom Switzer) for CoffeeHousers' benefit: It’s an intricate two-step, but one false move now spells death. As Kevin Rudd surprises everyone, including his own supporters, with his adroit middle-of-the-night resignation in Washington DC, seeking the ideal strategic moment to knife his nemesis, the Prime Minister ducks and weaves hoping she won’t shoot herself in the foot (again).

Tuesday

Tom Switzer

Gillard’s fractious premiership

From our UK edition

‘The definition of an Independent Member of Parliament, viz., one that could not be depended upon.’ - Former British prime minister, the Earl of Derby to Queen Victoria. In the August 21 federal election down under, the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard copped a stunning rebuke from the Australian people. Consider this: Tony Abbott’s centre-right Liberal-National Coalition won nearly half a million more votes than the Australian Labor Party. It secured more seats than the ALP (73 to 72 in the 150-seat House of Representatives). And the Labor administration became the first first-term government since 1931 to lose a parliamentary majority. So how does Labor claim a mandate to govern?

Saturday

Tom Switzer

Conservatism has triumphed in Australia, whoever its next PM might be

From our UK edition

He’s ‘too archetypically conservative’. He’s too much of a ‘King Catholic’. He views the world through a ‘narrow ideological prism’. He’ll ‘split the party’. He’s ‘unelectable as prime minister’. Under his leadership, the centre-right Liberal party will become ‘a down-market protest party of angry old men and the outer suburbs’. As these barbs indicate, Tony Abbott is as much a hate figure among Australia’s left-leaning academics and columnists as Margaret Thatcher was in the senior common rooms of Britain’s great learned institutions.

Thursday

Tom Switzer

Fallen idol

From our UK edition

‘A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren’t still there, he’s no longer a political leader.’ Perhaps nothing better describes the extraordinary downfall of Kevin Rudd than American presidential adviser Bernard Baruch’s remarks in 1932. Extraordinary, because for three years from 2006 to late 2009, Australia’s prime minister was in the political stratosphere. And yet, today, Rudd was knifed in the most ruthless, swift and effective fashion. And the hit men? Factional warlords of the Australian union movement.