Latham, still Labor but more realistic?

[Rorschach]

Ex-Labor leader Mark Latham doesn’t fear being called a ‘rat’
The Australian
12:00AM May 13, 2017
Gerard Henderson

In Labor Party mythology there are the true believers and there are rats. The former are honoured for sticking with the party in good times and in bad times. The latter are despised for having split with Labor when holding parliamentary seats and/or having deserted the party and joined another.

On Sky News’ The Bolt Report on Monday, former Labor leader Mark Latham announced that he had joined the Liberal Democrats in NSW. Latham told Bolt he would consider running for parliament again since he was “up for the fight” to defend Western civilisation.
It is unlikely that Latham can enter the Senate any time soon. Sitting Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm has indicated his intention to run again at the next election, scheduled for no later than mid-2019. It is not likely that the Liberal Democrats could win more than one Senate seat in NSW. Yet it is unwise to make predictions about the outcome of Senate elections.

So Latham may remain a person who abandoned Labor and criticised the party as a com­mentator. Or he may, just may, ­return to a parliament and oppose his former colleagues from the crossbenches. Either way, he will be regarded as a rat, even if this term of derision is not as frequently used in Labor ranks as it once was.

It’s just 13 years since the ALP put Latham forward to replace John Howard as prime minister. His supporters ­included former prime minister Gough Whitlam. He did not win the October 2004 election and quit the leadership and parliament soon after.

This week Labor moved quickly against its one-time prime ministerial candidate. It seems Latham was not a financial member of the ALP in NSW. So all that could be done was to prevent him from ­rejoining the party. NSW Labor Party secretary Kaila Murnain ­announced that it has been ­“resolved that if Mark Latham ever attempts to rejoin the ALP, that his application be rejected”.

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen declared: “One of the mysteries of public life is why anyone takes this guy seriously any more; he once had something to con­tribute … that was a long time ago.” NSW Labor senator Sam Dastyari threw the switch to abuse, labelling Latham as a “racist, Islamophobic, misogynist homophobe”. Yet Latham’s views have not changed dramatically from when he led the ALP.

In the Labor caucus meeting in Canberra, the approach was lighthearted but the resolution was the same. Queensland MP Graham Perrett asked Bill Shorten whether Latham’s portrait should be removed from the wall of the partyroom. The Labor leader is ­reported to have replied: “Both he and Billy Hughes will be there as a reminder.”

John Iremonger wrote an essay titled Rats published in the 2001 book True Believers, commenting that the solidarity of the Labor Party turned on the understanding that all Labor MPs would vote as one in parliament. He added: “The lineage is clear: in breaking that solidarity the rat is the first cousin of the scab and the blackleg.” So there.

Hughes became prime minister in October 1915 following the resignation of Labor prime minister Andrew Fisher. He split with the party in 1916 because of his support for conscription during World War I. Hughes subsequently won elections in 1917, 1919 and 1922. It’s easy to dismiss Hughes as a rat. But he left the ALP on a matter of principle at a time when he was Australia’s successful wartime leader.

It’s much the same with Joseph Lyons. After a period as a Labor premier in Tasmania, Lyons ­entered federal politics in 1929. He served in the cabinet of Labor prime minister James Scullin but quit his party over economic policy during the Depression. Another matter of substance.

In time, Lyons joined the United Australia Party, leading it to victories in 1931, 1934 and 1937 before dying in office in April 1939 — to be succeeded by Robert Menzies. Like Hughes, Lyons was a successful prime minister who presided over Australia’s recovery from the Depression and, contrary to the leftist critique, he left Australia better prepared for hostilities in 1939 than would have been the case if then pacifist Labor had governed throughout the 1930s.

According to Iremonger, ­Hughes and Lyons are rodents. Clearly most Australians at the time held a different view. In the period between 1917 and 1937, the two former Labor prime ministers led their new parties to a total of six election wins out of the nine polls held during that time.

This contrasts with Labor leaders Bert Evatt and Arthur Calwell, who each led Labor to three ­defeats — variously in 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961, 1963 and 1966. Evatt was a one-time Labor saint but his appeal to the true believers has diminished in recent years and he is increasingly held responsible for initiating the disastrous Labor Split of 1955. In his recent biography Evatt: A Life, John Murphy ­accepts that it was Evatt — not BA Santamaria — who lit the match that ignited Labor’s disastrous fire.

Like Evatt, Calwell’s position in Labor mythology has diminished. Yet, like Evatt, he is not regarded as a rat. That label is reserved for the likes of Hughes and Lyons. And now Latham.

It is unlikely Latham will care about his effective expulsion from the ALP. Few so-called Labor rats have, with the exception of former NSW premier Jack Lang, who was readmitted to the party virtually on his death bed. For the rest, they cared little about what the true believers thought.

[Rorschach]

Barbara
1 hour ago
We need more champions of free speech like Latham. Far too few politicians are prepared to defend it.

Larry
1 hour ago
According to Dastyari Mark Latham is a deplorable just like me. If I see Mark on a voting card he will probably get my tick.

Peter
1 hour ago
Latham is making a more profound impact now than he ever did as Labor leader. He's clearly identified a couple of core issues that for me are more important than economics- protecting our culture and free speech.

James
2 hours ago
Latham's reincarnation is a result of progressive overreach. He is truer to the real Labor tradition of sensible economic reform and suspicion of social engineering, than any of the current true believers.Hope he gets elected. That will be one more rational Upper House vote than we currently have....

Sandra
2 hours ago
If Latham stood for the Senate at the next election, he would romp it in.

Seems the NEW Mark is much more popular these days...