The most popular PM (along with Bob Hawke) in 40 years didn’t even get to see out his first term in office. The people who voted him in didn’t get a chance to decide his fate.

Politics is a strange beast. The Labor Party handed Kevin Rudd his arse this morning. The most popular PM (along with Bob Hawke) in 40 years didn’t even get to see out his first term in office. The people who voted him in didn’t get a chance to decide his fate. Out. Gone. Months before a federal election.

And why? Sure he’d made mistakes and had lost support after a series of tough and unpopular decisions. But as the SMH reported today Labor had stabilised in the polls and were back to being an odds on favourite to win the next election. Even on his worst day Rudd was far ahead of Abbot as our preferred PM.

Rudd did some great things. He made an overdue apology to the stolen generation that meant a lot to indigenous Australians. He shielded Australia from the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression. He pushed his staff and himself and barely slept for three years – serving his country. He offered an ideological change from the neo-conservative politics whose support of an unregulated market was, according to many experts, largely responsible for the global financial collapse.

Global warming? Kev was big on it. Called it the moral and economic challenge of our age. According to the mainstream science it sure seems be. That hasn’t changed. Rudd copped it for abandoning the ETS but Tony Abbot was the spoiler on that one. If you’ve read about the efforts Rudd made in Copenhagen to try to secure a global agreement you wouldn’t question his resolve on the issue. When I heard that he said “Those rat-fucking Chinese are trying to fuck us” – I was disappointed by the news but thrilled by the language. It showed he had his heart in it.

Apparently we are losing our elected leader because he didn’t get along with the power-broking factions in the Labor Party. I dunno – maybe he was more interested in running the country?

So we’ve got Julia Gillard who supported all the controversial decisions that lost Rudd support. That, to me, is very lame.

According to the SMH Gillard was going to stick by Rudd until she found out he had been testing his support within the party on the quiet. Apparently, Gillard was angered by this because it implied Kevin didn’t trust her public assurances that she would remain loyal.

Sounds like personal politics and a pretty flimsy reason for axing the big cheese.