Is there an advantage in changing a leader

[poddster]

Is there an advantage in changing a political party leader? Do party policies change with a different leader?

 If you had a leaky boat and you changed the figurehead would that fix the leak?

If you had a sound and seaworthy boat would changing the paintwork make it leak?

Closer to home, would changing the prime minister cause the opposition to pass the budget?

The media laps up any turmoil that is what keeps it going, gorging any thing negative, the readers love it.

Sad huh ?

[joz*garage]

Is there an advantage in changing a leader

if the ALP is anything to go by, probably not 

[iapetus_rocks]

Tony Abbott was never a very popular person to begin with; never a popular leader.

He and his coalition only won the last election because the people were fed up with Labor and their mismanagement and their internal divisions. Labor was voted out rather than the LNP being voted in.

Now, I think that even if Tony Abbott is tossed out as leader and as PM, then we're still going to be stuck with the LNP's policy decisions, and that has not worked to gain them any friends except in the big end of town.

Can they change? Can they change from being a pro-rich-person's party to being a party which supports the interests of the workers, the poor and the disadvantaged in society?

I doubt that they can. And I know that they don't want to.

  I continue to wonder how they can ever gain the support of any average working person, seeing as how every time they win govt, they act against those people's interests.

Labor is not much better. Purple ties worn to business lunches paid for by the people who really run this country no matter which political party is in power.

[lloydslights]

I always thought that Tony Abbott was a sacrificial lamb for the LNP leadership.  

Some hard decisions had to be made, and those decisions wouldn't be liked by a lot of people.  

My thoughts were that he would be replaced before the following due election for a more sophisticated "sales" person.  Not this soon.

DEB 

[vicr3000]

lloyd

Hadn't thought of it like that.

I am not sure that Abbott would have been elected had Labor not been so much on the nose.

I think SOME of his policies were vote winners - stop the boats being one.

But with him never being popular, you have to wonder why he was picked.

[lloydslights]

Would you pick someone you liked to be the "face" of those hard decisions that had to be made?  

Sacrificing for the Party, 

DEB

[vicr3000]

I wouldn't but that is probably because I was brought up in an environment (military) where potentially having to make the ultimate hard decision (sending people into danger, death) had to be made so I just got used to making them.

BUT, I can well see how others would / could chose someone to do the dirty work, then replace them once it is done.

It goes on in businesses all the time, they get a middle manager to fire people below them, then once that job is done, the senior people fire the middle manager.