Latham needs to make friends with working-class women, not enemies

“The survival strategies and persistent attempts at self and community involvement and empowerment adopted by working-class women fly in the face of Latham's condescending assumptions,” she said.

Even without the sad, if unnecessary in a privacy sense, revelations of his ex-wife, it is easy to come to the conclusion that Latham is not that fond of females. Women from across the economic spectrum would no doubt find agreement with her opinion that Latham's gender gave him a preferred position in the family home when he was growing up.

It is hoped that women in the party and community alert him to the fact that he is no more than anyone else is “God’s gift to the universe”.

We regularly read and hear criticisms of the constricting nature of the more extreme manifestations of identity politics. For example, a female member of the Crikey! team recently found it necessary to distance her opposition to sexist advertising from that which emanates from “hairy-legged man-hating” feminists.

A little of this (sometimes-misdirected) energy might also be aimed at the belief that we are still defined by our class. Let us hope that Latham's makeover goes further than the promise to no longer be vulgar to a reassessment of his attachment to tired constructions of plebeian manhood.