THE FRONT DORE: Down in the polls and out of sorts, this is the way for Anthony Albanese to get his mojo back

What a loser.

It doesn’t get any worse in Australian politics than Steven Miles.

The demise of Miles, the political buffoon from central casting who got to play at premier of Queensland for a ludicrous 10 months after Labor’s faceless men hounded Australia’s most successful female leader out of office, provides the perfect blueprint for Anthony Albanese to rework his character, restore his credibility and rebuild his confidence.

Albanese 2024 is bland and grey. He looks how he is performing: poor. Lacks energy. Lost his mojo. No get-up-and-go.

Albanese is flabby and dull. In body and mind. Joyless. Most days Albanese gives off big I-don’t-want-to-be-here vibes.

He’s not having fun, he rarely has a laugh. Never at himself.

Albanese is moping around like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Yet somehow he’s also bored. He’s fudging it. Not really into it, not really out of it.

Albanese is fed up with questions, effed off by inquisitors, irritated by, well, everything, including the thing he loves most — politics.

Some prime ministers past have had every reason to feel overwhelmed in office, burdened by the weight of national leadership. Men and women at war, the economy plunged into crisis, terrorism, the world shut down by pandemic. Hawke, Rudd, Howard, Morrison.

They each had fair dinkum drama to contend with, issues to solve. Big ones. This guy has got stuff all to worry about. His biggest conundrum is someone else’s problem. Thankfully, because when it comes to the economy, he’s lost. Unlike any previous leader, even the good ones like Bob Hawke, he doesn’t even have a legitimate rival waiting to plunge the metaphorical knife into his neck.

Scott Morrison, who successfully steered Australia through and out of the COVID era, secretly sought medical help while PM for “pure physical exhaustion”. He was struck by anxiety and was set upon by the “unrelenting and callous brutality of politics”. Without medication “serious depression would have manifested”.

“Politicians are not made of stone, yet they’re often treated as though they are, including by each other.”

Some have noted Albanese’s language suggests he might be struggling. In off-the-cuff remarks in Perth last weekend, Albanese was given an open mic opportunity to have some fun with his critics. He couldn’t find the words. Instead he grumbled. “I love all the media, they are always so gentle and kind.”

A knockabout bloke, Albanese has never worked too hard in public life. Everything has always come pretty easily. He has spent his adulthood in politics being adored. The good guy. Everyone’s mate. Albo. Harmless, happy, heartfelt Albo.

His expectations have always been low. Happy in the service, fighting factional wars, sneering at Tories, staving off Trots. All good fun, meaningless stuff.

As a minister in the Rudd-Gillard era, Albanese lacked ambition. He got in his lane, and stayed there. Transport minister. Infrastructure. Keep it simple. He did the same in opposition. Turns out it was a pretty good life. While Morrison goes down in infamy for taking a family holiday in Hawaii while prime minister, it turns out Albanese, while running transport policy, happily accepted free business class upgrades for several holidays to Honolulu. Aloha Steve and Danno!

Being prime minister isn’t easy. It’s not about a full diary of appointments. It’s not about keeping busy.

It’s about leadership. Meaning. And purpose. It’s about going off script when the moment demands it. It’s about taking a stand when the situation requires it. It’s about strength and clarity.

Albanese is proof there is more to national leadership than winning an election.

The greatest shock to Albanese is that not everyone loves him anymore. Even in his own party, those who once truly loved the man, the jovial, sincere guy with a bit of fire in his belly, now talk about how disappointed they are by him.

Expectations for those harder heads who knew Albanese well were low, but he has not even met them. No one in Labor outside his inner circle believes Albanese is doing well. No one in Labor is overly happy about how Government has turned out under Albanese.

“Part of the problem is he’s got a small group of people that he listens to and their job is to boost him up, not to give him honest feedback,” one Labor minister says. “He is a confidence player. He does best when everybody is adoring him. And when everybody is adoring him he’s terrific.”

But Albanese has struggled with criticism. “It gets in his head.”

Labor was slaughtered in Queensland. Queenslanders don’t mess around when they’re done.

Miles is a child, he played stupid games. Made silly promises Queensland couldn’t afford. Engaged in undergraduate left-wing politics. Didn’t care that he was lying and dissembling, because his one job was to “save the furniture” and avoid an electoral rout that could have set Labor back a generation.

Queenslanders were disgusted.

Yet the PM thinks Miles, a factional fellow traveller, did well.

“Steven Miles ran an effective and vigilant and courageous campaign. But the outcome was much better for Queensland Labor than what was anticipated,” Albanese said Sunday.

His remarks reveal everything that is wrong with politics.

Rather than praise the imbecilic politics of Miles, Albanese should adapt his own style and outlook, understanding that sensible voters will not fall at a national level for the idiocy of Queensland Labor’s cynical, psychotic campaign, nor will they be seduced by the nonsense of the Greens.

Albanese has, naturally, already seized on the rejection of the diabolical Greens. The anti-Semitic, divisive, destructive, economy-destroying anti-intellectualism of the modern Greens has no place in Australian politics, other than on the foolish fringe.

Albanese’s lesson from the Greens is unfortunately not the one he will likely take. But it is the approach he must adopt. Labor has pandered to the obscenity of radical left politics, flirting with it broadly, but most egregiously on its stance against Israel.

By extension, Labor, so fearful of a non-existent electoral backlash, has failed to smash the organised hatred, the misogynistic, homophobic and racist Islamist underbelly evident in a small number of Australian suburbs, now being given an acceptable face through dopey white Anglo-Saxon influencers and impressionable idiots on our university campuses.

Albanese, buoyed by Brisbane’s battering of bat-shit-crazy Greens, should take the opportunity to stand boldly against this mindset. It’s time.

David Crisafulli’s campaign should also give courage to Albanese to embrace decency and reject opportunism.

“Real Julia” Gillard didn’t work. But absent Albo should make way for a more driven and direct Anthony Albanese. Channel Mark McGowan. Look at Chris Minns in NSW and Peter Malinauskas in South Australia.

Queensland shows Albanese that he must remake his brand.

Less battler. More Minns and Malinauskas. It’s now or never.

Albanese has only months to stop the slow, seditious slide into minority government.

The sentiment best expressed by a senior Albanese minister:

“If we have to rely on the teals or the Greens to form government it will be frankly a f..king catastrophe.”