Love is dead, friends. Yes, the union between online anger-cloud Mark Latham and sorta-kinda political party the Liberal Democrats has come asunder with the news that Lathos has left.
“I’ve been a Liberal Democrats member for the past 16 months,” he wrote to the party. “In recent times the national executive has been discussing my possible nomination for political candidacy without resolution. Given the nature of the impasse, I have been advised to run elsewhere. In the circumstances, it’s only fair and reasonable that I ask you to cancel my Liberal Democrats membership please.”
And the Liberal Democrats won’t because a) there’s no way David Leyonhjelm is going to sit back and hand Latho the top spot Dave currently occupies on the party’s senate ballot, and b) given Ley-J’s pitiful showing in the 2016 double dissolution election, where he only scraped in as the #12 senator for NSW, the LibDems have any seats at all is mathematically unlikely.
“I wish him good luck, but not too much luck,” Davo cattily said of Latham’s decision.
So where will Marky Mark go? No-one knows. Or, to put it another way, everyone knows: Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
For one thing, Latham was recording One Nation robocalls in Queensland mere months ago, begging listeners not to vote Labor in the Longman by election. Of course, they did vote for Labor – in increased numbers, no less! – so there’s a fair question to be asked as to whether the ol’ Latham charm is as potent as both parties appear to think.
Then again, One Nation do need some sort of star candidate if they’re going to hold their NSW senate seat.
After all, Brian Burston, their only NSW senator, quit to join the United Australia Party aka Palmer United 2.0 and Latham has a name recognition which no other local candidate has. Sure, One Nation only got 4.1 per cent of the vote in 2016 but that’s still a full percentage higher than the LibDems.
Will it be enough to win in a normal election without preference deals, when the “quota” is ostensibly over 14 per cent of the vote? It’s really hard to say since we’ve never had a normal election under the new senate ballot, but… maybe?
In any case, it’s the best chance he’s got to make the public pay (more) for him to sound off in parliament again. And he could probably use the distraction from how not-well his defamation defence appears to be going.
Then again, would Pauline Hanson really welcome someone like Latham into a high profile role? It’s a lose-lose for her: if he doesn’t improve the party’s fortunes in NSW then she looks like a fool for grabbing him; if he does then he becomes a potential threat to her primacy in the party. Hell, she’s had dramatic public fallings-out with far less argumentative people in her party.
And she’s reported that he’s not running for One Nation at the moment – at least, she specifically said he wasn’t running for the senate, although it’s worth making the point that she has previously said that she would be “quite happy to have him on board”. So it seemed less like a policy and more like she maybe hadn’t checked her texts.
So expect that press release or, more likely, Facebook post any ol’ tick of the clock.