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 | Losing It Annabel Crabb Picador/Pan Macmillan 2005, Paperback, 294pp  Adelaide raised Annabel Crabb spent a few years in the Canberra Press gallery covering politics for Fairfax newspapers, and is now based in London. Roughly speaking, her story of the demise and fall of the Australian Labor Party fits the time-line of her tenure in Canberra, so you might assume she knows about what she speaks.And she does: 'Losing It' is an extremely well written account of those years following the fall of Paul Keating (dumped by the voters who punished his arrogance) and the wilderness years of opposition politics; through names such as Beasley, Crean, Latham, and Beasley again. 'Losing It' is written with a clarity and simplicity not often found in political histories; and it is a great read as a result. Neither egg-headedly pretentious nor stupidly linear, Crabb has resisted the attempt to be too clever or 'insider' smart or to employ big words where smaller ones will suffice. The arguments and the political machinations can be easily followed, though this is nothing like an exhaustive treatise - it's less than 300 pages long, for goodness sake. In fact, timing is on Crabb's side, since this is a book which should be read at or about the same time as you're reading 'The Latham Diaries', since she knows Latham and his time as party leader well. She is able to put some perspective into the wilder claims raised by what Latham insists are his memoirs, rather than the vitriolic dummy-spit they appear to be. Interestingly, she and Latham are agreed on one aspect of Federal politics: Labor's chances of winning the next election, or the one after that. In fact the theme of Crabb's book - if there is one - centres around her belief that the Federal Labor party is a spent force who are doomed to be the opposition party until the voters tire of the Liberal Government. Clearly, she can see no way for Labor to 'win' Government in its own right.  | |
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