The Albo thing is wearing thin. ‘Keep calm’ doesn’t cut it anymore

Résumé détaillé

Anthony Albanese’s approach to leadership was vested in his belief in himself as the character known as “Albo”, who enjoyed a special relationship with ordinary Australians. Four years into his time as PM, the goodwill has worn off.

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Anthony Albanese had a story to tell and sell to a shell-shocked Labor Party in the days after its surprise 2019 federal election loss: Give me the leadership and I, Albo the everyman with a love of beer and Oz rock and my single parent, public housing upbringing, will not frighten or challenge the voters with big or difficult policy ideas as my rival Bill Shorten did. I won’t antagonise business by attacking the “big end of town”, as Shorten did: I will bring calm to politics, let the erratic Scott Morrison destroy himself and lead our party into office.

After ascending to the leader’s chair unopposed, Albanese was good to his word. Labor secured a small win in 2022 and a landslide victory last year. Every leadership choice involves a roll of the dice and this one paid off. But the profound extent of the Albanese wager is now being laid bare.

His approach was vested in his belief in himself as the character known as “Albo”, who enjoyed a special relationship with ordinary Australians. He was no Bob Hawke, who was effectively willed into the prime ministership by a large majority of Australians and kept there for multiple electoral terms. But he was still seen by most as not a bad bloke. Four years into his time as PM, the goodwill has worn off. He’s more “Albanese” than “Albo” these days.

The essence of the gamble on Albanese was that the Labor government he would lead would take power in 2022 without extolling a comprehensive critique of the country’s deep-seated problems after 20 years of Coalition rule in the previous 26 years. Instead, rather than pointing to a series of urgent crises that Labor would have to fix, he stepped lightly into power as the man who was not Morrison.

His method did not deny Labor’s regular role as the greater change agent in politics as much as suppress it.

There was a lot that was wrong with the structure and practice of our economy when Labor…

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