Tony Abbott is Prime Minister of Australia. For now.  We will know in the hours after 9 am on Monday morning (Australian Eastern Daylight Time) if the spill motion in the Liberal Party room meeting has been successful or not, and, if successful, if Abbott has retained his leadership. I hope he does.

Here is a ruling class that wants to accelerate the decades long shift of wealth from workers and the poor to capital and the rich. The most hated Budget in recent history reflected that philosophy, and attempted to further commodify health services and higher education and reduce the social wage and social services.

Leaders matter.  What the ruling class wants and needs is not only a political leader with a program to continue and intensify that wealth shift from labour to capital but also to be able to implement it, and do so in a way that plucks the working class goose with the least hissing. Abbott is not that plucker. He has produced so much hissing that his party is languishing far behind Labor in the polls (and has been for some time, almost from the day the Coalition were elected on 7 September 2013.)

As Deputy Leader Julie Bishop allegedly said to Abbott, ‘you are your own worst enemy’. Well, he is our enemy too, but Bishop has a point.  His gaffes and buffoonery, coupled with his attacks on workers and the poor, only reinforce the sense among many that this man is not fit to lead. Abbott gives neoliberalism a bad name.

There is palpable anger against Abbott in voter land. He and all his faults are the focus of our contempt for neoliberalism. As is so often the case we mistake the person for the policies. However an incompetent like Abbott, totally divorced from the real world of ordinary working class people and raised and existing only in the Liberal Student hothouse that now both is and inflames the Liberal Party, helps us understand not only the reality of neoliberalism but the fragility of its political leaders.

Even if he wins, Abbott loses. Certainly his ‘reform’ agenda will slow, if it is not dead. The demands from business for cuts to penalty rates, for the abolition of the minimum wage, for tax reform, for tax cuts, will be slowed or dumped. The too hard basket will overflow, and the anxiety among the ruling class will increase. Labor and its ability to deliver much the same agenda as the Liberals, with the complicity of the trade union bureaucracy, will become an option. Certainly one Murdoch journalist is now making that case. [Google Adam Creighton, ‘Only the Labor Party can repair budget bottom line’ The Australian 6 February. It might be behind a paywall but google can hopefully get you around that.]

There is I think a deeper reason for the seeming volatility of voters and the recent dumping of the first term Liberal and National Party governments in Victoria and Queensland and the same fate befalling the current Federal Liberal and National Party government. Many workers have a social democratic desire for a better world, born of the labour/capital relationship and the sale of our labour power. The Liberal and National Parties are confronting that dream with a reality of horrors that impact on people and with cuts or attempts to cut our living standards. They are increasing unemployment and have no answer to let alone a vision for addressing a rapidly slowing economy.

A different Liberal leader would still be selling us the same shit sandwich. In the case of Malcom Turnbull that shit sandwich would have some honey added. However the reality remains that a neoliberal shit sandwich is still a neoliberal shit sandwich and Turnbull is as committed as Abbott to deliver further shifts in wealth shifts from us to the 1%. The zigzagging and potholed path he would choose might be laden with honey, but honey on the road to Hades won’t save us from eternal neoliberal damnation.

The same is true of the Labor Party. The most successful neoliberal governments in Australia have been the Hawke and Keating Labor Party governments. Indeed by their worshipping at the altar of profit they laid the ground work for the ascendency of John Howard to government.

Hawke and Keating were so successful because they used a mainly compliant trade union leadership to impose real wage cuts on workers, privatise assets, introduce enterprise bargaining and attack the social wage.  Bill Shorten, the current Labor leader, is remarkable for his unremarkableness. He looks as ill-equipped to accelerate the wealth shift from labour to capital as Tony Abbott. Chris Bowen, his shadow Treasurer, knows what is needed; spending cuts and tax rises.

The key point is to fight all the forces of neoliberalism and their actions. The current Abbott Liberal and National Party government is weak. The Australian Council of Trade Unions has called a nationwide protest on 4 March to fight for our rights. This is a good first step. Of course the trade union bureaucrats see this as the end of the campaign. Their vision is a nice softly softly march and then shut up shop, vote Labor in 2016 and all will be well. It won’t. To paraphrase the Australian unions poster above, different parties, same agenda.

A concerted strike campaign (‘illegal’ of course) could drive the current rabble from office in weeks.  It would have support from many workers if built properly. It might even drag Labor to the left although their parliamentarians are so imbued with neoliberalism that any such concerted and real resistance might leave Labor in its wake. ACTU called strikes won’t happen and in 2016 Bill Shorten will take the neoliberal mantle from Tony Abbott.  Not much will change, with another neoliberal lightweight in charge.

Please keep Tony. Please!