Sheesh, Talk about a winter of discontent

Yet, curiously, Gillard is just as culpable for every policy program that Kevin Rudd has announced (arguably moreso when it comes to the builder’s early retirement (BER) scheme). She is, famously, a crucial member of the “gang of four” that drives the ALP agenda. So if policy is not the reason behind the challenge, we are left with one variable - personality.

Kevin Rudd is just not naturally popular - which, as a basis for a party to change its leader before the end of a single term, without input from the public, is a pretty poor reflection on democracy.

You see, Kevin Rudd is a nerd. And not just any old nerd - he’s a teetolling loner Christian nerd, the very bottom of the social pecking order in the high school play yard that is Australia.

At first it was fun, having a guy in power who read books, wrote essays, spoke in complicated language and who had no time for the popular kids in their cliquey trade unions. It was almost like a bad Hollywood teenage movie - he only got to the top in the first place because the most popular girl in the room took him under her wing and gave him the credibility he so desperately craved.

And then that new kid bad boy Abbott arrived. Willing to remove his shirt at the smallest opportunity and flex his muscles, he singled out Rudd and publically dissed on his plan to introduce a textbook trading scheme - “if people wanted textbooks for studying, they should just buy their own”, or something like that. For whatever reason, it was a diss that completely burned Rudd to the core - nerds traditionally aren’t great with quick-witted comebacks.

Combined with gossip about Rudd’s inability to find a date to the miner’s formal, and about how Gillard would probably end up taking Abbott behind his back, Rudd did what all nerds would do - he promised himself to work harder, to forget about his new found friends, and to dazzle everyone with amazing grades at the end of the year (I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!).

But I’m afraid that today, we’ve seen that its not the academic awards that matter in politics - turns out you’re better off focusing on the cliques and getting their signatures in your yearbook after all.