Men of the Week Special: Kevin Rudd and his quest to re-become prime minister

There’s been a hell of a lot going on this week, but despite this it seems necessary to dedicate this space to one person in particular. The Lazarus of Australian political figures, Kevin Rudd, who on Monday will take another tilt at the Labor leadership and being head of Australia.Kevin Rudd’s demise and re-emergence has been somewhat expected to be fair. While political figures such as Simon Crean would like you to believe that Rudd has been “plotting” his return to the top spot in secret, the fact of the matter is few were not able to anticipate an attempted Rudd return at some stage. It’s been a terribly kept secret that the media has been all over.

It leaves the political environment of Australia in extremely murky waters. Kevin Rudd’s popularity has soared in polls, so much so that it is clear the Australian people want him to lead the country for at least the short term up until the next Federal Election. Internally though, his political colleagues want no such thing, with Julia Gillard a clear leader at this stage to retain the Labor Leadership into the next election, and then if the polls are correct, lose in a landslide against Tony Abbott and the Liberals.

So how does that make Rudd the man of the week then, if it seems that despite being popular, he will lose to Gillard when the vote occurs on Monday morning, and then the Labor party of which he belongs will lose to Abbott at the next Federal Election? Simple. Whichever way the tide turns for Rudd on Monday morning, he walks out a winner. Either a winner as the Prime Minister of Australia again, or a winner of the people’s vote. A winner who can almost assure himself that when Labor and Julia Gillard lose the next Federal Election, he can stand proud and say he would have won had he gone up against Abbott and that he was the people’s choice.

Sure, he can’t really prove it, but when it comes to politics, since when did they need to prove anything!