So what the f*** happened?

I think that's what we are meant to believe is what Kevin Rudd would have woken up screaming today.

Is it possible to piece this together? A thoughtful piece from Patricia Karvelas put together the sequence of events.

It starts becoming clear that there was the start of a move by some in the FPALP (Fed Parl ALP) to unseat Rudd about a week ago. Gillard rejected it, but it was the reaction from Rudd's office with his CoS effectively being seen to doing the numbers that really threw the party into a tizz. Christiner Jackman suggests Jordan is being set up as the fall guy. The most charitable interpretation is that Rudd's office had to do this because no MP came forward to do it. Ultimately the PM had no support base.

The more interesting part is exactly who was responsible for what. Andrew Bolt tries to brand Gillard with all the failures. According to Karvelas, in the caucus Rudd claimed that the ETS and RSPT decision was made by Gillard and Swan not him.

While the decision of Lindsay Tanner to walk for personal reasons is I'm sure genuine, in all things there is a calculus that balances different factors. Being the fourth member of the "kitchen cabinet" that was perceived to be getting everything wrong cannot have been giving him a good feeling about his daily grind.

Ultimately it is hard not to feel that Wayne Swan has been the accidental winner here but really is the main culprit. There is a really big lesson. If you commission big reviews, release the report when you get it not when you are ready to respond. here probably would have been community demand for an RSPT if handled that way.

Meanwhile it is nice to see that there are some in Britain envious of our process. Most important is the realisation that electing the leader from the party membership is a disaster. The public elects MPs who then determine who will govern - the fact they are gathered in parties makes the information issue a whole lot easier.

If we want to vote for the leader of the Government directly then we should support an executive presidency like the Americans. For Tony Abbott to suggest the process we've just gone through is wrong means he doesn't understand the model of a parliamentary monarchy that he so earnestly wants to retain.