“Silence is sometimes the best answer”. Wise words those from the Guru to end the Coodabeens on ABC Melbourne this morning. Julia Gillard should have taken notice before the disastrous series of interviews that gave rise to headlines like these this morning:

When you are as unpopular as the Prime Minister is then silence really is golden. The more she says the more she will get findings like these:

By comparison with that lot The Weekend Australian looked positively friendly:

The harshest judgment of the morning has to go to the editor-at-large of The Canberra Times Jack Waterford who ended his assessment of Julia Gillard’s year since deposing Kevin Rudd with this comment:

Politics are dominated by events including chance ones as much as ideas, but, as things stand, it is very hard to see Gillard fighting her way back into the public’s good books. The longer she stays, moreover, the more difficult it will be for any successor to retrieve the party’s fortunes.

So far, however, she is safe, if because there is no challenger willing to spill her blood. What many of her increasingly despairing colleagues must hope, however, is that she emulate her old close friend and ally Mark Latham in his last great favour to the party, by getting sick, or going mad, or both, and abruptly quitting and in a manner that left her successor whoever that be without her blood on his or her hands. He lasted only a year too.