The Latham Diaries (New Edition)

The new edition of The Latham Diaries features new material, including an introduction and chapter, in which Latham responds to his critics and to the 2005 media storm created by its publication. They are searingly honest bulletins from the front line of Labor politics and provide a unique view into the life of a man, the Party and the nation at a crucial time in Australian history.

Mark Latham resigned from parliament in January 2005, after only fourteen months as Leader of the Opposition, amid bitter post-election recrimination and his own ill health. From the beginning of his career he was viewed by many observers as the ALP's resident intellectual and larrikin, the great hope of a new generation with the drive and talent to become prime minister. So why did his career end so abruptly?

As The Latham Diaries reveal, the rising tide of public cynicism about politics, the cult of celebrity, the dangerous liaison between politics and the media, and the sickness at the heart of the Labor machine all played their part. As did Latham's own errors, as he candidly records in these diaries. This is a riveting chronicle of life inside politics: the backroom deals, the front room conniving, the bitter defeat of idealism and the triumph of opportunism.

The Latham Diaries is not just the story of the Labor Party in the last years of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, but a sobering account of the state of Australian democracy 100 years after Federation.