Tony Blair may be gone, but he is not forgotten. Here in Australia, his 1997 election campaign is serving as a text book for the strategy of the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, in the current general election.

Since Mr Rudd took over as leader last year, Labor has dominated the polls, entering the election earlier this month with a 16-point lead. Rudd's strategy has been to ditch Labor's unpopular left-wing policies, to portray himself to voters as a man who is not really Labor and to stick relentlessly to the same messages.

Ring any bells? Tony Blair's 1997 campaign was based entirely on what Alastair Campbell called in his diaries “the mantra”: that Labour was about the many not the few; that education, education and education were the top three priorities; that the NHS would be repaired; and that he offered leadership instead of the Conservatives' drift. Rudd has adopted the same approach: he will fix healthcare; “working families” have been ignored by the Prime Minister, John Howard; education is the priority; Howard is tired and backward-looking.

But it's easier said than done. Howard called a six-week campaign (polling is on November 24) because, with Labour so far ahead, he had to hope that the opposition would unravel under pressure. It looks as though that is now happening.

Despite Australia comfortably meeting the Kyoto treaty targets, Howard has refused to sign the treaty because all the real obligations were placed on the developed world. Last week the news leaked that the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was urging him to do a U-turn and sign up, gaining green kudos at zero economic cost since the targets are already met. Faced with an open goal, Rudd ignored his campaign- themes straitjacket and attacked Howard, unable to resist the PM's embarrassment.

But this opened up a new front for Howard to attack: what about Labor's green policies? Labor has indeed unravelled. The party's environment spokesman — immediately endorsed by Rudd — said Labor would sign a new treaty that did not place obligations on developing nations. Then, after 24 hours of non-stop assault by Howard, Rudd went into a tailspin. Labor's position is now that India and China should indeed be made to sign up to targets — Howard's own position, which Rudd was vigorously attacking just a day before.

In the process he has managed to make himself look clueless in international negotiations, to make his proposed Cabinet look incompetent and to look rudderless in policy. And this when the latest poll shows the governing Liberals halving Labor's lead to eight points.

The odds are still heavily on a Labor win. But Howard is the most underrated politician in the world. In 1969 Australia was caught up in an unpopular war and there was a feeling that the Liberals had been in power too long. But the economy was booming, just as today, and Gough Whitlam, of Labor, had to wait until 1972 to win. Will history repeat itself?

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