THE Australian people rejected a leader they had elected on four previous occasions and who had once seemed so invincible that he could call himself “Lazarus with a triple bypass”.

This morning, John Winston Howard could be forgiven for wondering how it all went so wrong. The prime minister who lost his seat had presided over a booming economy, low inflation and near full employment.

“This result has defied every piece of electoral arithmetic I have known,” said Alan Milburn, Tony Blair’s former health secretary, who is in Australia to advise Kevin Rudd, the Labor leader.

Howard’s north Sydney seat of Bennelong fell to Maxine McKew, a former television newsreader who worked as a BBC secretary during a gap year in London in the early 1970s.

The press ditched Howard too: three out of four newspapers in the big cities backed Labor. Even Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Howard’s favourite newspaper, abandoned him.

Swing voters embraced Labor partly because they were drawn to Rudd’s youthful appeal and avowed economic conservatism. But Howard also drove many voters into the Rudd camp, said political analysts.

Miriam Lyons, director of the Centre for Policy Development, suggested that he had failed to meet voters’ deeper aspirations, such as curbing climate change and introducing greater fairness in the workplace, Rudd’s determination to ratify the Kyoto climate treaty meant Labor won support from Green party voters, which pushed many of its candidates to victory.

Howard’s age – 68 – was used by his opponents to strengthen the impression that he was out of touch with younger voters and families.

Interest rates rose six times in Howard’s last term, losing him the support of the conservative working class who bore the brunt of the higher mortgage payments.

Another factor in Howard’s loss was his announcement that he intended to retire “well into” his next term, if elected. That did little to reassure voters. Were they voting for Howard or his likely successor Peter Costello, the unpopular treasurer? Rudd asked the question to lethal effect.

Rudd ran a smooth and persuasive campaign, as Milburn observed. But he played down comparisons with Blair’s first triumph.

“Rudd captured the mood of the nation,” said Milburn. “It was different from Blair in 1997, in that people were deeply angered at the Tories. I didn’t detect anger at Howard. I detected weariness and a sense that the government had lost its way.”

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