I think I can, I think I can, puffs the little red Abbott

Rudd goaded Abbott into the debate at the National Press Club on health care. Abbott accepted, wanting to intimidate Rudd and put him on the back foot in the run up to the election. Abbott is a better fighter, a better performer; Rudd will show up by comparison. Rudd is a corridor man, a backstabber and as such he does not readily handle open and upfront competition. He needs clear air in order to perform. Rudd can’t brawl, Abbott can.

The Press Club debate was uninspiring and uninformative. Without a policy Abbott did not have a platform. He performed below expectations and sealed opinion on who took honours with a silly (slightly hysterical) laugh toward the end. Rudd was as vacuous as ever. To get any traction in the next two or three leader’s debates Abbott will need to have policy and facts at his finger tips. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Scrapping, and winning, will not deliver Abbott the election because for as long as he carries Minchin, Tuckey, Andrews, Ruddock and others of the Liberal Party troglodyte right he will remain in opposition; and despite what he might believe, Barnaby Joyce is an electoral liability. With Abbott in full cry, Joyce is a supernumerary, he is not needed.

Abbott will not disgrace himself, in fact he will probably cause Rudd to eat humble pie, which would be no bad thing, but he will not be Prime Minister, not this time, and maybe not ever, but he will pave the way for change in the Liberal Party and perhaps the Labor Party.