CAMERON MILNER: Labor’s biggest problem is not the Coalition or One Nation but Anthony Albanese

Labor has an Albanese problem. No leader has been so unpopular, yet so immovable due to their chokehold on the party.

Albanese’s near complete control internally has allowed him to lose control of the Labor party’s vote externally.

The party is now polling at record lows, voters detest him, yet the conga line of Albanistas keep back-slapping and high-fiving. Who cares that the great Labor project is in dire peril as long as they share the spoils of office.

It’s a modern day tragedy that Labor could be doing so, so much more for working families if they had a leader who wasn’t weak, a liar and a chronic underachiever when it comes to Labor reform.

Having the numbers used to mean something for Labor PMs, instead it’s been reduced to being asked if you are a fraud for accepting a “global citizen” award from some no-name US thinktank.

Even Wayne Swan’s “World’s Greatest Treasurer” came from a well followed gazette.

All this comes as the nominal opponent of the Labor Party, the Liberals are on life support.

One Nation’s rise and Liberal’s demise should be Labor’s greatest opportunity to deliver reforms like Medicare or The Accord that in turn delivered superannuation for all workers.

Instead, Labor is led by a leader with political myopia. His one try at something big and radical, the Albanese Voice, crashed and burned with outright rejection from voters.

Now we have the national disgrace of First Nations children being kept in violent, drug-fuelled anarchy because of Albanese’s inactions.

Architects of the Uluru statement are openly questioning Albanese’s commitment to their issues and feel abandoned after he lapped up luxury rather than attend Garma.

First Nations leaders should reflect on their new found equality under Albanese and realise he lies to everyone, all of the time.

The problem for the Labor Party is their vote is now in free fall, only one point better than the Gillard/Swan catastrophe in 2011.

At that time a much younger Albanese was running around doing the numbers for a Rudd return.

After all, Albanese back then used to be all about “Fighting Tories”.

The Labor Party used to give leaders a bit of time, understood them being unpopular briefly even, but never tolerated the levels of consistent, month on month failure that Albanese represents.

The Party should be ashamed that it tolerates such total mediocrity, but it does because of Albanese’s vice-like grip on the caucus and the factions.

Back in the Gillard days Albanese while shilling for Rudd could rely on his union backers and malcontents in caucus to happily undermine the first female prime minister of Australia.

Nothing was off limits. They happily leaked from Cabinet and delighted in re-telling stories of Craig Emerson and Julia Gillard. Gillard suffered misogyny not just from Tony Abbott, but across the Labor caucus.

Roll forward to present day and while the Labor party burns, Albanese fiddles.

His total control has to be acknowledged, and the willing participants should be called out for their inaction.

What’s left of the Right is balkanised and its union base a pale shadow of its former self. Its myriad of potential leaders, Marles, Bowen, Burke, Chalmers, Charlton and O’Neil can only agree on one thing – that no-one else should get it ahead of themselves.

The block of SDA votes led by Senator Don Farrell has literally been given everything they want by Albo, a small price worth paying for total internal control.

The Left have anointed Mark Butler to succeed Albanese, but he’s much happier having candlelit dinners with High Commissioner Weatherill than telling Albo his time in office is up.

Albanese enjoys so much control that he makes those with supposed political ambition have to sit in the corner and watch him at work.

It’s a very sorry state of affairs for the Labor Party as more and more voters do what Labor faction leaders can’t, simply switch off from Albo.

Albo holds the record now for the longest serving, least liked Labor leader on record.

He should get some think tank to give him a gong.

In the midst of this morass of mediocrity One Nation gets stronger and stronger and the Liberals also limp on with Taylor. Hastie is the clearest alternative, but the ambitions of Tim Wilson and even Melissa McIntosh shouldn’t be discounted.

It’s as though the intransigence of Labor under Albanese to do what must be done has also infected the Liberal Party.

Even the UK Labour Party engineered a leadership change from Keir Starmer by getting Andy Burnham to run in a by-election.

The reality there was enough people having an “Emperor has no clothes” moment of collective clarity.

Labor in Australia though looks instead to still be in its Eyes Wide Shut moment with Albanese the star of the show.

By not challenging Albanese, by not having the courage to call out his mediocrity, Labor MPs are though complicit in Labor polling as badly as it is and voters flocking to One Nation.

Both the Liberals and Labor would be doing so much better electorally if they simply had better leaders.

The issue for Labor is with 94 seats they could actually be doing Labor reforms and being a Labor government.

What’s holding Labor back though is the dead hand of Albanese and his complete lack of vision.

His stultifying control of caucus and the party though is running the great Labor project into the ground and that’s why Labor actually has an Albanese problem.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary