Larvatus Prodeo

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been preoccupied with festive socialising and the fact that you haven’t bought any Christmas presents yet. But, in the rarefied circles of political tragedy, there’s a frisson of excitement, or perhaps manic enthusiasm, unrelated to the upcoming holidays. About Tony Abbott.

Yesterday, we had a ‘fighting speech’ described as ‘Churchillian’. Winston must be turning over in his grave, or at least reaching for another scotch.

Today, we’ve got an op/ed from John Howard’s chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos, which certainly fits the description of excitable. Abbott isn’t Churchill today, he’s Spartacus. Make of that what you will. It’s effortlessly deconstructed by Andrew Elder.

This mad boosterism about Tony Abbott’s pugilistic style has one purpose, and one purpose only. (Fantasies about armies of tradies who know all too well the Rudd stimulus has kept them in work adopting Abbott as the new messiah are just that; there’s no sensible electoral calculus in the Liberals’ current positioning.)

If money follows the polls then the Liberals are buggered. If you were on a corporate board you’d have Mr Abbott to lunch as a matter of courtesy, and listen to him describe cutlery as namby-pamby and elitist. Then, you’d send a donation to the ALP to keep in sweet with Senator Arbib.

Both Abbott’s speech and Sinodinos’ piece are really just fundraising letters. The Liberals are broke, deserted by big business. The policy suggestions, such as they are, are also premised on a fantasy – that Labor really is a socialist wolf in sheep’s clothing, with mad skills in disguising its intent to tax everything in the cause of redistribution.

Kicking the union can again is also significant.

Abbott does have an ideological position, one akin to Barnaby Joyce’s. He’s the voice of the petit bourgeois mentality, the populist appeal to those who feel themselves under siege in a fast moving world. It’s Pauline Hanson politics without the racism. Irrational, driven by affect, and projection. It’s the pure cry of the aptly named ‘anti-Labor forces’, and has no resonance or point of connection with the reality most of the electorate see.

It’s capable of attracting all sorts of folks driven by ressentiment, though, so it might bring in a buck or two. Here’s a tip, though: polls to stay around 56/44 in Labor’s favour.