Progressive intellectuals have poisoned the well for Labor

If an incumbent Coalition government fails to take meaningful action to reduce the expenditure commitments and workforce of the public sector it compromises its ability to protect itself from potential leaks and other forms of subterfuge by hostile public sector workers of progressive ilk. Further, a non‑reforming Coalition would effectively leave the furniture of modern Labor's power intact for the benefit of the next generation of governing Labor politicians.

The signs so far suggest that the new batch of state Coalition governments seem too unwilling to reduce the size of government and, in so doing, defund the political left.

The NSW Labor problem of today, which incidentally appears to have caught on to federal Labor like a cold, is also a combination of inflating community expectations combined with an inability to deliver upon those expectations in policy terms, and the mastery of 'spin' political rhetoric to conceal or divert voter attention to such failure.

However to portray Labor's problems as being limited to these issues of style, as important as they may be, is to ignore the underlying forces which risk shifting the party away from mainstream concerns and values.

How Labor over the next few years manages to bridge the gap between its increasingly assertive intellectual base and the economically powerful working and aspirational classes will be most interesting to watch. If we know anything of the Labor experience, expect some fireworks ahead as it wages war with itself.