It was all about Kevin. Always. And so, Kevin Rudd chose the dying hours of the first evening of the first full day of the new Parliament, his chance of redemption gone, to announce his resignation from Parliament. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video There will be relief and anger in equal measure within his party: relief his influence and his simmering, often malevolent ambition would no longer sit as a threat to the party and the leadership he has left behind; anger that he did not go long ago. He had been a prime minister twice, the first period offering so much hope for Labor. In the end, both of those periods in political terms will be judged, for varied reasons, failures.

Time to zip: Kevin Rudd wipes away a tear after announcing he's quitting politics. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen His ambition, his impatience and his promise had been great since his arrival in Canberra as the member for Griffith in 1998. Assiduously, he worked against the leaderships of Simon Crean, Kim Beazley - twice - and Mark Latham, for he saw none of them as equal to his promise. He became a Labor giant and an Australian political hero in 2007, taking power in a landslide from John Howard. He was for a period the most popular prime minister Australia had seen.

A key moment: Kevin Rudd and his wife, Therese Rein, during his press conference on Thursday 24 June 2010 Parliament House Canberra after he was deposed by Julia Gillard. Credit:Andrew Meares On Wednesday evening, it was - extraordinarily enough - Tony Abbott who paid tribute to Rudd for making the unforgettable apology to Australia's stolen indigenous generations, declaring his own patron, John Howard, had "lacked the imagination" to grasp the need for it. It was the new Labor leader, Bill Shorten, who had to confront the truth, declaring Rudd's resignation put an end to what had been a tumultuous era for his party. The arguments about whether Rudd should have been removed as leader only months before the 2010 election and replaced with Julia Gillard will probably never be settled. Loading

When he finally returned to the prime ministership, Gillard's term destroyed largely by Rudd's own sabotage, it was too late for Labor. Once again, the arguments will continue about how many seats he might have saved and whether he should have gone to the election quickly or waited, but Labor - the party that had swept to power on Rudd's popularity in 2007 - was soundly defeated. Now Labor can put Kevin Rudd behind it and Rudd himself might get on with his life. But he leaves behind an astonishing trail of collateral damage: including former ministers Nicola Roxon, Simon Crean, Craig Emerson, Martin Ferguson, Greg Combet, Stephen Smith and Peter Garrett, and many staffers, bureaucrats and colleagues burnt out by Kevin Rudd's ambition, which burnt beyond his own capacity to control it.