What a depressing end to a week of abject failure on the Australian Left

Malcolm Turnbull, happy, today.  Pic: Rob Griffith / AP

Lenore Taylor in the Guardian Australia online gives us another of her measured, perceptive readings of what's going on in Australian politics.  Meanwhile, the Australian Labor Party continues to run around like a headless chicken and / or sits immobile in the middle of the road like a stunned rabbit transfixed by the headlamps of a rapidly advancing 50 tonne truck and / or falls at the first hurdle (choose your preferred metaphor) while Malcolm Turnbull re-sets the Liberal Party's operating system and starts to map out what the Australian future looks like under a conservative government that isn't delusional, isn't backward-looking, isn't in thrall to that ridiculous fool Tony Abbott.

As is becoming usual these days for Mr Angry of Gilmore I made some comments 'under the line' which is a place ... like space ... where no one can hear you scream.  How depressed is the author of these words?

And so ... this 'modern' Conservatism follows the lead of its NZ and European counterparts to assert authority over Australian politics leaving many casualties in its wake.

Almost everyone heaves a sigh of relief that the short, embarrassing, ineffective and destructively delusional reign of Tony Abbott is over, dead, buried and cremated.

Joe Hockey leads the way to the exit door, which others will also take because they know they have been comprehensively defeated. By and large this group will accept whatever crumbs from the table they are offered to simply go away.

Andrews, Bernardi, Abetz and a few other troglodytes will bleat from the sidelines for a while until even they get bored with the sound of their own voices. Soon, not even Andrew Bolt will bother to interview them.

And the ALP - as evidenced again today by their inept, spectacular missing of the point, inability to see the bigger picture and tone deaf responses to what is clear for everyone else to see - already slips further behind, falls short and stumbles into a bleak, losing future. Their lack of understanding, analysis or credible alternative vision make this a very gloomy Sunday indeed for a left-leaning voter like me.

Bill and his team had two years to prepare for this moment. It's ghastly to realise just how bereft of ideas, how lacking in strategic nous they have shown themselves to be. Ghastly.