CONSUMERS of politics are weary of tea-leaf reading and rampant Labor leadership speculation - death by a thousand unsourced quotes. Sick of them - the plotting, process-obsessed protagonists of federal politics; sick of us - the doomsaying hysterics of the press gallery.
So let's give you a break, and ponder things we know. Today's Age/Nielsen poll shows the highest primary vote for Labor since March 2011, and the best two-party preferred vote since November 2010.
It shows a five-point improvement in Julia Gillard's personal approval rating since December. She has again nosed ahead of Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister. And Nielsen went into the field in challenging circumstances from the Prime Minister's perspective - with headlines blazing about how she was doomed as Labor leader, in the back-wash of that Australia Day debacle.
Gillard needed a flotation device going into the resumption of Federal Parliament this week, and, for once, a cracked boogie board showed up. For a PM on the bones of her backside, this latest poll - though it confirms a drubbing for the ALP if an election were held tomorrow - helps more than it hurts.
Of course there's another metric in this latest Nielsen survey that doesn't exactly help, and will spin the merry-go-round again. A majority - 57 per cent of voters - would prefer Kevin Rudd as PM. Camp Gillard will console themselves that the Kevin index is down four points since last October. But that endorsement from voters is what it is - the centrepiece of the pitch by Camp Rudd for their man to resume the prime ministership.
It's a simple pitch at its essence: Kevin is resiliently popular, Julia isn't. History shows Rudd has a bedrock of community support, and you Labor MPs all know, talking to the voters, that Julia will take us out backwards.
Camp Rudd was also assisted over the weekend by another metric that was briefed out, ironically enough, by Camp Gillard. Respected political commentator Laurie Oakes quoted Labor polling showing 38 per cent of voters still identified themselves as ALP people, but only 30 per cent intended to vote ''for the Gillard government''. (Led by? Ah yes, Julia Gillard.)
Of course the material Oakes quoted could be subject to multiple valid interpretations. But the simplest reading tends to reinforce the pitch of Camp Rudd - this is a ''Gillard'' problem, not a ''Labor'' problem. A Rudd backer (ignorant yesterday of today's Nielsen improvement, but literate on the sum of polls to date) puts it thus: ''The polling suggests [voters] haven't given up completely on us, but they have given up on her. There are Labor voters out there right now who don't want to vote Labor. That says there's scope and capacity to generate improvement.''
Now of the leadership, what if anything is happening right now?
Estimates of caucus numbers have been reported in various newspapers. There would be pencilled names in columns. But people who would be counting numbers say they aren't yet counting. Perhaps they are foxing. Either way, the situation is very fluid.
There was a burst of internal Labor activity last week when reports suggested there had been movement away from Gillard over the summer - people rang each other and checked. Those calls then looped back into conversations with journalists.
Logic and experience suggest the current position is this. Rudd doesn't have the numbers. Not yet. His supporters are chasing the ''m'' word - momentum - internally, and through the media. The appearance of unstoppable momentum is critically important in courting a swag of ''undecideds'' in the caucus. Collective despair is such that the message is compelling.
Gillard, for all her laudable fighting words and her cabinet backing, is a long way from certain that her position is tenable. There have been too many stuff ups. The existential stress you detect around her is palpable. She's fighting for her political life, and she knows it - the pitch to caucus yesterday was really a pitch for time (I know what we should talk about, we've done the hard things).
Watching Labor at the moment reminds me of novels my son went through a phase of liking - books where you could select a range of different twists in the plot. Turn to page 78 if you want Nancy not to go into the spooky house. Turn to page 94 if you want Nancy to go in. For Labor, there is the appearance of options. Trouble is, the end has already been written. On page 365, Nancy gets it. Doesn't matter what route she takes.
An infection has taken hold: Labor can't seem to prioritise the health of the whole over the sum of the riven parts. Change would require united focus on page 365, not a fixation with the variable intrigues of pages 78 and 94. It requires decision and discipline, not drift and destabilisation.
When the choices are unpalatable and the field evidence contestable, drift can become the path of least resistance. Look at the last several months. So much unhappiness. No unanimity about what to do about it.
But what is building - visibly, inexorably - is the oppressive sense that for federal Labor, judgment day is now inevitable.
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