When Crean’s resignation was obviously imminent, I wrote

Leaving that aside, the choice is, I hope, a no-brainer. Beazley and Latham both had lots of strikes against them anyway, and they’ve spent the last six months bagging each other. Excluding a bunch of candidates who might be good but who don’t have the profile to score a win, we’re left with Rudd.

Rudd’s failure to gather enough support for a run has left me to conclude that the Caucus has no collective brains.

It appears that Caucus will go for Beazley and near-certain (but hopefully not disastrous) defeat, rather than take a risk with Latham. Rudd has supposedly made some sort of succession deal with Beazley, but this will count for nothing after Labor is defeated and Beazley resigns. So we’ll probably get Beazley, then Latham, a depressing prospect for those of us who’d like to see this government defeated.

Surprisingly, no one seems to have pointed out what a gift Beazley’s election will be to the Greens. For Caucus members in ‘safe’ (that is, safe from the Liberals) seats, this, and not the supposed fickleness of aspirational voters, is what they should be worried about.