On Saturday night last one of the most conservative governments in the world, that of John Howard's Liberal Party in Australia, was ousted by a resurgent Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, now the prime minister elect, writes Vincent Browne.
Mr Rudd addressed his jubilant supporters in Brisbane and gave a flavour of what they and the rest of the world can expect from him. He said: "Australia has looked to the future. The Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward." He said he wished to put aside what he called old battles between employers and unions and developers and environmentalists. "The great Australian 'fair go' has a future and not a past." He would be prime minister for "all Australians".
One needn't have known anything else about Kevin Rudd other than his utterances of these banalities on election to appreciate that under his Labor government, nothing at all will change in Australia, at least nothing that matters.
The defeat of John Howard removes from office the last head of government that formed George Bush's "coalition of the willing" that invaded Iraq in March 2003. José Maria Aznar of Spain was removed from office in elections in 2004. Tony Blair was pressurised into retiring. Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland last month also lost in elections. All of which may be satisfying to those of us who have opposed the war in Iraq; but does it change anything?
Yes, Australian troops will be withdrawn from Iraq. Well, actually, it seems that is not quite so - several hundred of them will remain on security duties. (What, incidentally, were the others doing?)
Polish troops have also departed, as have the troops of Japan, the Philippines, Italy, Hungary, New Zealand, Portugal, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Ukraine and Thailand.
But does it make any difference? In that victory speech in Brisbane on Saturday night, Kevin Rudd was careful to say: "Our greetings tonight to our great friend and ally, the United States." Following a phone call from George Bush on Sunday, Rudd said he would visit Washington "as early as possible" and added: "I said to President Bush and I emphasised to President Bush the centrality of the US alliance in our approach to our future foreign policy."
In an editorial on Monday, the Financial Timesnewspaper stated: "Australian businessmen and investors have rightly greeted Mr Rudd's victory with equanimity. His fiscal policies look as conservative and sensible as his predecessor."
There will be some cosmetic gestures. He has promised to make a formal apology to Aboriginal Australians on behalf of the nation. This is 10 years after an inquiry that past policies to remove indigenous children from their families amounted to "genocide".
For that is the way with modern Labour parties. High-flown, vacuous rhetoric, the only commitment being to leave untouched an unjust social order. For, it is argued, that is the "mood" of politics nowadays, anything else is "unrealistic". If that is so, what is the point of Labour parties? If they are not there to change unjust social orders, what are they about? I ask this question in the context of Eamon Gilmore's speech to the Labour Party conference in Wexford the weekend before last.
To be fair to him, it was not as vacuous as the remarks I have attributed above to Kevin Rudd and he did mention fairness and equality and he spoke of ending poverty. He spoke of Susie Long and asked: "Why can't this rich country get medical treatment for its small population, on time, reliably and on budget?"
But then he said: "Ireland needs a new purpose - we need to get a sense of national direction and aspiration. A common cause, to inspire the allegiance and the imagination of the new Ireland. We need a vision for our country, and its place in the new expanded Europe and increasingly globalised world, over the next two or even three decades. Building on the new Republic. Moving Ireland on to the next stage of our progress, the next phase of our country's history. A new purpose for the new Ireland."
What gene is missing in the body politic that there is not a shudder down the collective national spine when anybody speaks such balderdash? How was it that delegates at Wexford, to a man and a woman, did not shriek for forbearance from that ear-splitting and mind-splitting twaddle? My point is that anyone who utters such claptrap is essentially saying: "I am like the rest of them, don't worry, nothing of what matters will change."
The Financial Timescan be assured. And, regrettably, the reality is nobody need be alarmed by the Irish Labour Party coming to power. Certainly no powerful vested interest need fear. Those who command vast wealth, influence and power here will suffer no dislocation by Labour coming to office and, conversely, those with little wealth, little influence and little power should have no hope.
Power relations will remain the same, with some minor cosmetic adjustments. For that is the way of Labour, of social democrats, even of some socialists, nowadays.
They are all Progressive Democrats now.