John Howard was damned if he went and now is damned because he stayed

Australian airwaves are abuzz with Federal Liberal leadership conspiracies and rumours of conspiracies.

The reason for the gathering mutterings is the alleged feeling among supporters of Peter Costello that Prime Minister Howard should have retired from politics at his promised 64th birthday reconsideration of the matter.

In June last year the Prime Minister made a decision to stay on, and at the time he made that decision it was the right one. Why? Because that was then, and this is now.

Mark Latham’s seemingly stratospheric, if unexpected, rise in popularity has led to the usual herd mentality reflection that John Howard should have made way for the more youthful Peter Costello.

But as we so often do in life and politics, we look at decisions taken in history through the prism of today.

Just think back to the polls of last year.

In mid April 2003 the highly regarded Newspoll had only four per cent of Australians thinking Mark Latham was the best choice to lead the Federal Labor Party. 36 per cent of Australians thought Kim Beazley was the best man to Lead Labor.

But even more telling, and probably more influential in the thinking of senior Liberal strategists, was another poll in early May that put the relative appeal of various leaders in context.

That poll showed that John Howard was far and away preferred as Prime Minister to Kim Beazley, by 53 to 37 per cent.

The poll also showed that Peter Costello could easily beat Simon Crean if he took over from the Prime Minister after his 64th birthday declaration - not out.

But that same poll also showed that Kim Beazley would hammer Peter Costello in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, at that time by 55 to 32 per cent.

In an increasingly Presidential political scene in Australia those numbers matter. They’re not everything, but they do matter.

So, like a game of political scissors, paper, rock, we know the polls last year were saying that:

• A Howard beats a Beazley
• A Costello beats a Crean, and
• A Beazley beats a Costello

We also know that back then Mark Latham wasn’t in the game, and most thought that a Beazley would beat Crean.

So, when the bottles of bubbly came out for the Prime Ministerial 64th birthday, the pressure was on for him to make a call. Using the information he had to hand, the logical decision was that his staying on offered the best chance for the Coalition to keep government.

Certainly the Coalition parties were highly relieved by the Prime Minister’s decision to stay in the Lodge – if only occasionally actually sleeping there.

But what might have happened if Mr Howard had decided to hand over the Liberal Leadership slippers?

Labor would have just pulled the switch and run the known quantity of Beazley against Costello – because the polls showed Beazley would have had his measure.

Instead, when Mr Howard said he would stay on, Labor faced the near certainly that neither Crean nor Beazley were going to claw back the required seats.

Instead they went for the wild card entry – Mark Latham. They had nothing to lose. So far it’s working for them, more by unexpected good performance than a plan or expectation from either Labor or the Press Gallery. This was most starkly detectable in the sharp intake of breath heard from the assembled media when Mr Latham was declared the new Labor leader.

Supporters of Peter Costello may be right - he may be capable of a Latham-esque metamorphosis, but the evidence to date hasn’t supported that.

While Internet polling is not the most accurate - only indicative - the Ninemsn poll from Friday showed that less than a third of the tens of thousands of respondents warm to Peter Costello’s leadership of the Liberal Party over John Howard. So voters are still not warming to Peter Costello in any numbers.

Today there are plenty of noise-makers prepared to decry John Howard for staying on, but at the time he made the best decision with all the information before him.

And for the poll-watchers, it’s worth considering that this time three years ago, at the beginning of an election year, all analysts pointed to a Labor election whitewash.

We know now that the wily John Howard machine clawed that back and actually improved its position in relation to Labor.

It would be a foolish person indeed who wrote off John Howard’s chances at the next election. And it would be a foolish backbencher who got spooked by current election-year poll numbers nowhere near as dire as those over which the government prevailed at the lest election.