A scare a day to keep Labor away is the prediction Julia Gillard neatly makes about the form the Liberal Party campaign will take from now until polling day.

Her leader Kevin Rudd is out spruiking the same message as he predicts a close election, whatever the opinion polls might indicate, because John Howard is a “very clever politician and we’re going to see, as we’ve seen before, a very big fear campaign from him about unions, about interest rates, and his claim that the sky will fall in if people vote for anyone other than him.”

Over in the Government camp they might indeed be plotting a fear campaign against Labor but they are certainly stricken with the fear that they are about to experience a campaign against themselves.

The person who has the Liberal Party strategists worried is Rupert Murdoch, with signs emerging that the country’s major newspaper chain is about to get off the fence and give Kevin Rudd a hand.

As far back as May Crikey drew attention to signs that the mood of the Murdoch tabloids was becoming friendlier to Labor. The time for more balanced coverage – or, worse still for Howard, a pro-Labor bias – could not be far away, we observed, because continuing with an anti-Labor campaign dominated by columnists Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt, only for Labor to still win, would put an end to the illusion of power which Rupert Murdoch uses to his advantage so ruthlessly.

As the opinion polls have continued to show Labor leading comfortably, the coverage certainly has got friendlier. Only the most biased pro-Labor zealot would argue that Kevin Rudd has not received a fair go in the metropolitan dailies.

Even the revelations by Glenn Milne of drunken meanderings in a New York night club ended up boosting the Labor Leader’s popularity rather than harming it and Andrew Bolt has joined the chorus of those suggesting the time has come for John Howard to step aside.

But it was the same suggestion this morning from the grandly titled Editor-at-Large of The Australian, Paul Kelly, which will cause the real panic in the Government.

The ponderous and ever so serious Paul does not rush to judgment and his reflections rarely deviate far from the collective wisdom of the corporation he has worked with for more than 30 years. That gives an ominous significance to the message in this sub-heading: “If Liberals fear oblivion, John Howard must reassess whether he is the best leader for the party.”

Kelly referred to Howard’s formula that he would stay leader only as long as his party wanted him and concluded:

The party is not going to depose Howard and Peter Costello is not going to challenge him. Howard’s leadership lies in his own hands.

For 12 years he has stayed Liberal leader because he judged correctly that he was the party’s best election winner. That was true in 1995 and it was true in 2006. But is it still true in September 2007?

What is the real message of the polls? Is it for Howard to bring on the election? Or is it that the public has closed its mind against him?

Howard has no intention of walking away from this battle because for him that would be an act of panic and cowardice.

But if the Liberal Party really believes the election is lost, then Howard must consider his responsibility as leader. He needs, at least, to re-examine his position and decide whether its logic remains valid.

The Australian’s political editor and stalwart Howard supporter, Dennis Shanahan, might not be a supporter of Howard gracefully stepping down, but he has belatedly joined the ranks of the pessimists.

As noted in Crikey yesterday Shanahan’s take on the latest Newspoll was that the Prime Minister had no choice but to call an election even though public polling says he faces “annihilation”.

“It’s his own word,” he wrote, “and his only choice.”

Quite apart from what the Murdoch papers do from here on in, the loss of support from The Australian – a loss signalled by a tough editorial only a fortnight ago bemoaning the lack of real achievements by the Howard Government in its 11 years – will influence other members of the media to take a more critical line.

Kelly and Shanahan stand outside the Canberra press gallery herd but their defection from the belief that a miracle victory might still occur will now become the conventional wisdom.

Journalists, you see, are no different from others in society in knowing that there’s safety in numbers; it is okay to be wrong if everyone else is wrong too. Despite the trend of the polls there has been a reticence to say that Emperor Howard has no clothes on.

That will no longer be the case. The story shown in the following graph will now be told: it will take a miracle, such as a graceful departure speech by John Howard at the end of APEC, for the Government to be returned.