"Many journalists swallowed the Latham juggernaut because they believe what they write. To them, politics is front row in the Coliseum, holding up scorecards."

Something which characterises Latham's leadership even now. When Latham was first elected leader, the media and political classes got all excited over how he'd signify a "fresh alternative", and the rise of a new, more brazen, better differentiated left.

This didn't happen because, as it happens, Mark Latham never really was left-wing or even all that different from many in the Liberal party on anything more than his branding.

Now those same journalists brand him a "loser" and a "dead weight" for the party - something his fellow party members are all too happy to jump on because, surprise surprise, they all want to be leader too.

All this talk about the Labor leadership over the past three years has been too grounded in fantasy, hype, and what things signify, rather than what they are.

Latham looks set to go, but in my opinion at least, he's still the best option of the boys of the Labor Right, the only ones with any real chance of grasping the leadership.

Nice one Peter please tell us when you have a life changing illness and we will kick you.

Peter is wrong on one point: the media commentators never understood Mark Latham's Third Way ideas. The silly 'triangulation' concept was never a key part of Latham's thinking during his Third Way phase. The key was a rediscovery of civil society - that there is a society out there outside the political world, indeed outside the public sector, but which is savagely affected by much that happens within the political world. For a brief period, Mark Latham wrote, and spoke, about reinventing politics so that society could be strengthened, and made more robust and independent of politics.

But all that disappeared once he became Labor Leader. Then it was back to the same old, same old of Labor traditionalism - what's good for the public sector is good for society, as if their identity is the same. Well, it's not. Which is why Latham had to abandon his Third Way thinking to survive as Labor leader for even 12 months.