The Australian's Troy Bramston and Chris Kenny discuss the desperate e-mail Julia Gillard sent Kevin Rudd two days before she became PM.

JULIA Gillard wrote Kevin Rudd an email, two days before she challenged the then Prime Minister, warning his government was headed for electoral oblivion and was being seen as “incompetent and out of control”.

The correspondence sent at 9.49am on Monday, June 21, 2010, according to The Australian, sheds light on just how worried Ms Gillard was about Labor’s standing in the community at the time, especially about asylum seeker policy.

“To state the obvious — our primary is in the mid-30s; we can’t win an election with a primary like that and the issue of asylum-seekers is an enormous reason why our primary is at that low level,” Ms Gillard wrote, after that morning’s Newspoll showed the party’s vote slumping to 35 per cent.

“It is an issue working on every level — loss of control of the borders feeding into a narrative of a government that is incompetent and out of control. As you know I have been raising this with a great deal of anxiety and I remain desperately concerned about lack of progress,” she went on.

The email published in the soon to be released book Rudd, Gillard and Beyond by Troy Bramston, indicates Ms Gillard was losing confidence in Mr Rudd before she toppled him, despite her claims she only decided to challenge on June 23.

“I do not normally email you directly Kevin and I don’t intend to make it a habit,” Ms Gillard said.

In the email with the subject ‘Asylum seekers’, she offered Mr Rudd advice about how to get the government back on track and combat the “key negative” areas of asylum-seeker policy, the proposed internet filter and climate change.

Despite her warnings, there is no specific threat of the leadership showdown which took place 48 hours later, when Ms Gillard visited Mr Rudd’s office to tell him she would be challenging his position.