Recent events have amply illustrated that politics is a brutal game, in which practitioners are subjected to relentless acts of bastardry from ambitious rivals, muck-raking journalists and sundry other scumbags and bottom-feeders. Worst of the bunch are the psephologists, who spend their time between elections anticipating the next health crisis or personal breakdown that will bring on an eagerly awaited by-election. So it has been with the protracted demise of former New South Wales Opposition Leader John Brogden, who has today pulled the plug on his political career a month after the dramatic events that ended his leadership. The result will be a by-election in about two months for the leafy northern beaches electorate of Pittwater. Of itself, this is unlikely to be particularly interesting given the 20.1 per cent Liberal margin and the certainty that Labor will not field a candidate. But given the fault lines that Brogden’s fall exposed in the New South Wales Liberal Party, the preselection could be a doozy, and this site will be over it like a rash.
In other news, the Poll Bludger has been hard at work on a redesign through WordPress that will make the site up to 70 per cent less clunky and stupid-looking, as well as furnishing it with a comments facility and other blog-related bells and whistles.
