PETER VAN ONSELEN: Albo wields ultimate power in Labor. Here’s the inside story of how the PM brutally shafted his enemies – despite BARELY winning the last election. But now his colleagues are finally waking up…

It is finally dawning on Labor MPs that they may have ceded too much power to their new Prime Minister immediately after his election victory.

Buoyed by winning the 2022 election, Labor MPs quickly agreed to Anthony Albanese’s agenda.

It started with the Voice campaign, and what a disaster that turned out to be.

Despite the failure of the referendum campaign, the arrogance of unbridled power within the Labor government has allowed Albo’s ego to continue unchecked.

The problem for Labor is that it is now too late to do anything about it.

Despite rhetorical claims that Albo intended to run a traditional cabinet government, the fact is that the prime minister has established an inner sanctum of old allies and friends, eschewing the collective wisdom of those around the cabinet table.

Albo, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher form the inner sanctum. All members of the faction on the left. Everything guided by awakened inner-city thinking.

The groupthink of these three is spectacularly out of touch with the marginal voters in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Albo drove out enemies (Kim Carr), sidelined potential challengers (Tanya Plibersek) and promoted subservient followers (Kristy McBain).

His carefully selective observations about colleagues did not stop there.

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten was limited to leading the NDIS and the once all-powerful NSW right was strategically positioned in portfolios and parliamentary roles designed to weaken their power and play them against each other.

The hubris of the election victory masked how lackluster the campaign and the victory really were.

Especially Albo’s performance. The best week of the campaign for Labor was when the leader was forced to stay home due to Covid.

Reflecting that disappointing performance since then, Prime Minister Albo’s personal approval ratings have fallen more sharply than party votes.

It is a clear sign that he is now a hindrance rather than a good thing for Labor as we prepare for another election campaign.

Yet Albo remains strangely all-powerful within Labour.

It’s easy to forget that the Labor Party won the 2022 election with a record number of primaries – just 32.6 percent of voters.

Kirsty McBain was quickly promoted to the outer ministry after her election

Tanya Plibersek was handed the environmental portfolio – in what was widely seen as an outlier move for one of Albania’s faction rivals

The majority government demanded that Labor win 77 seats, and that is exactly how many seats they won. A worn-out majority: the worst performance by a winning opposition since World War II.

But in the aftermath, Albo privately noted that his authority was absolute, and that he was not wrong.

The changes to Labor leadership rules introduced by Kevin Rudd have helped to strengthen that authority.

The rise of the Teals was a distraction from Labour’s minimalist victory.

Now we see a chorus of former Labor loyalists sounding the alarm about the extent to which the Albanian Labor government has lost its way.

Former trade union leader and co-architect of the 1980s economic reforms, Bill Kelty, says the current Labor government is ‘middled in mediocrity’.

Former Labor senator and minister, Kim Carr, has released a new book, writing that ‘the Labor ship has hit the rock of identity politics, with too many of its spokespeople taking a censorious tone against those who fail to embrace their views. specific social policy agendas’.

He’s talking about you, Albo, among other things.