Because politics is laced with ego and is in many ways the institutionalised projection of (mainly) masculine self-confidence, people forget about doubt.

Doubt is one of the least interrogated yet most fundamental drivers of ambitious political actors. People with the self-belief to be leaders of their political parties wake up every day wondering how they will get there, and once they get there, they default to wondering who is plotting to snatch the opportunity away from them.

When driving ambition is there, doubt exists in equal measure. Doubt is Canberra’s dark side of the moon.

Over the past few weeks, Bill Shorten has washed up in the doubt zone, largely because the people around him are doubting, shifting, reflecting, worrying, chattering.

At its simplest level, that’s what’s going on. That’s the static you can see coming from the Labor side of politics. That’s why political journalists are leaning in with their ears pricked – not because we are addicted to crass spectacle or can’t be bothered following policy debates, but because we are close enough to detect the shift in the barometric pressure.

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So why the doubt? Labor is ahead in the polls and has been since the last federal election. Labor in 2018 is a campaign machine, with formidable message discipline and institutional strength the Liberal party would kill for.

But some believe the contest is closer than it looks, and not everyone thinks the pitch is in sync with the times. Others, who suspect it is possible to win with the current pitch, worry it won’t set Labor up with solid foundations for government. The fretfulness behind the scenes has been in evidence intermittently since the party’s underperformance in last year’s Bennelong byelection.

Doubt always intensifies as you get closer to crunch point, and Labor as a collective is convinced Malcolm Turnbull will call a federal election this year, not next. In the minds of the opposition, we are five minutes to midnight.

So last week, Anthony Albanese provided a public focal point to an undercurrent that has existed for some months.

Albanese missed his chance of being federal leader in 2013 when he won the grassroots ballot but lost the job because of a left split within the Labor caucus. Last week’s speech was about saying, as diplomatically as possible:



I’m not sure we are where we need to be to win;

It looks like we are just activating our base;

We can’t rely on the Liberals to lose; and

PS, I’m here should anyone want to draft me.



Albanese’s alternative manifesto, as I noted earlier this week, was in part a bit of signalling for the benefit of the New South Wales right, a group not much enamoured with the class warfare, and a group that has, historically speaking, determined who leads the Labor party.

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Some in Labor will tell you the NSW right isn’t what it used to be; that the once-mighty faction of Paul Keating doesn’t make or break Labor leaders in 2018 because they are too busy hating on each other – and that’s even true for the most part.



But it’s also true that the NSW right will determine whether the current excursion to the dark side of the moon is a transient blip or a harbinger. If the NSW right as a collective loses confidence that the incumbent can lead Labor to victory, that the long march ends in triumph, then we are in a very different place, and Shorten knows it.

The Victorian right doesn’t trust the NSW right. That’s just a resting disposition. But there’ve been some specific tensions of late. Shorten has copped it recently from some quarters of the right in NSW over Katy Gallagher, a leftwinger returning to the Senate at the expense of rightwinger David Smith, and over the preselection of leftwingers in Western Australia.

Tantrums have been had. Things have been touchy.

The real crunch point will be the looming byelections. Labor is looking at those results with a collective intake of breath

So now let’s enter the specific events of the week. Shorten on Tuesday blurted out a position that had been cooked up in the shadow expenditure review committee – that Labor would repeal the company tax cuts for businesses with turnovers of between $10m and $50m.

Given that decision hadn’t gone to shadow cabinet and certainly not to caucus, it caught most colleagues on the hop. The leader’s office didn’t issue MPs lines to help them explain what had just happened: a rarity in an internal communications operation geared to rapid response. There was a collective rabbit in the spotlight moment before MPs started extemporising on live radio, and critics seized the opportunity of briefing against the leader’s office.

Given it was not the plan to announce the position to a handful of journalists loitering outside a business conference of a freezing winter morning, Shorten’s brain snap also caught the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, on the hop. An unkind soul might say it hung Bowen out to dry.

There are a few things to know about Bowen. The shadow treasurer tries to walk a line between being entirely unapologetic about Labor having the most assertively progressive economic policy in a couple of decades (which he is) and also keeping the business community broadly onside.

This is a delicate line to walk, and certainly Shorten lobbing surprises – like suddenly confirming Labor’s policy on company tax before it has gone through internal processes, and before there is time to frame and war-game the announcement and soften up the stakeholders – could be considered unhelpful.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chris Bowen was left in the lurch by Bill Shorten’s tax repeal announcement. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

The other thing to know about Bowen is he is the most senior figure in the NSW right – that faction that will ultimately determine whether events this week are just a blip or a prelude to something bigger.

Punching Bowen in the nose, albeit inadvertently and accidentally, was pretty brave of Shorten in the Sir Humphrey Appleby sense. It’s fair to say some remedial action may have been required – and pronto.

So now we reach the clean-up session on Friday. Shorten squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, and recanted part of what he’d said on Tuesday, citing new information.

He emphasised the importance of leaders leading by listening, which was not only an apologia to the outraged underpants mogul who had featured as the case study on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, but also a crow-eating homily largely for internal consumption. (Sorry guys, Bill bad.) In the process of eating some of his own words, Shorten made life a bit easier for Bowen.

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Bowen then returned the favour by magnanimously making a public declaration of loyalty to Shorten. “I can assure you that Bill Shorten has my full support and will continue to do so,” he told the hyperventilating hacks. Asked whether that was true of his faction, Bowen said he was “sure that all my colleagues in NSW, regardless their factional arrangements, agree with what I just said”.

All stirring stuff, but the real crunch point here will be the looming byelections on 28 July. Labor is looking at those results with a collective intake of breath.

If the ALP holds Braddon and Longman, that’s one thing. If they don’t, that’s another.

Labor still wears the scars of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period. This is a political party that has picked itself up and glued itself back together after disintegrating into shards in full public view. Everyone, true believers and waverers, knows from bitter lived experience that short, sharp movements against incumbent leaders against their wishes carry huge transaction costs.

But in the end, it all comes back to doubt. When doubt takes hold, when we all travel to the dark side of the moon, the experience of the last decade in Canberra tells us anything can happen.