KEY POINTS:
Not for the first time, Labor Leader Kevin Rudd is being seen as the political reincarnation of his former British counterpart Tony Blair, now making a living as a peacebroker in the Middle East.
The latest, probably inevitable, comparisons have been made during international television interviews, in themselves
an indicator of the attention the former diplomat from Queensland is gathering to himself.
But they have been drawn since 50-year-old Rudd took control of the Labor Party from Kim Beazley last December and immediately began booting Prime Minister John Howard's previously unshakeable foundations from beneath him.
Less than three weeks out from the November 25 election, the similarities with Blair's crushing 1997 defeat of the Tories shine through: the latest Newspoll in the Australian shows Labor with a commanding lead, despite a 1 per cent gain by Howard that falls within the poll's margin of error.
In both cases, the overwhelming advantage was provided by long-running incumbent Governments - the Margaret Thatcher-John Major Conservatives in Britain, and Howard's four terms. And, like Blair, Rudd has bundled Labor well into the centre, blurring the divisions between the two. Howard calls it "me-too" politics. Rudd is branding himself as "new leadership". In Britain, Blair marketed his party as "New Labour".
"I always believe that I'm a Labor moderniser," Rudd told international finance cable-tv channel CNBC this week. "I'm part and parcel of making sure that our party and our country is equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century."
Yet in pre-leadership backgrounds Rudd and Blair had little in common, apart from Labor membership, a period at boarding schools, and the devastating death of a parent: Rudd's father when he was 11, Blair's mother when he was a student at Oxford.
Blair was a rowdy youth who was once arrested trying to clamber into his boarding school after hours, and played in a rock band before gaining a second class degree and starting working life in a law office.
Rudd was a studious youth, apart from a long-haired gap year: dux of his high school, first class honours at the Australian National University, fluent Mandarin speaker, diplomat, senior state bureaucrat in Queensland and, finally, in 1988, a federal labor MP.
Blair joined Labour after graduating in 1975. Rudd joined in 1972, aged 15. Both shared similar meteoric rises to the top, and both found similar themes.
There are differences in the foes they faced. In Britain, Thatcher's successful iron rule was disintegrating under the succeeding John Major, whose economic credibility was battered by a currency crisis. Howard may be facing another interest rate rise today, but the Australian economy continues to surge ahead.
Blair recognised the fundamental strength of Thatcher's economic policies and moved his party to the centre, appealing to the inherent conservatism of British voters but branding himself as a new, vibrant force for the future.
Rudd has done the same in Australia, forcing the old Labor demons into a locked cupboard and promising voters that while his will be a government of vision and new ideas, they will be safe from the bad old radical days.
He told CNBC he was a free trader who believed in market forces: "I'm from that school of economic belief that says markets are a great determinant of the best and most efficient allocation of resources."
Rudd's view from the centre has been echoed by shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, one of the few shadow ministers to be guaranteed a place in Cabinet should Labor win.
Both have worked hard to counter Howard's fear campaign against a return of union power, promising that while conditions lost under existing industrial law will be restored, wages will be contained by productivity-linked enterprise bargaining.
Both have rejected any retreat into protectionism for the nation's besieged manufacturing industry, and have wooed the big end of town with councils and spokesmen for business, services and independent contractors.
Like Blair with his "third way", Rudd also promotes a policy of "social inclusion", designed to replace the welfare cycle and dependence on benefits and pensions in favour of investment and incentives to pull the poor and disadvantaged back into the mainstream economy.
Again like Blair with the British Conservatives, Rudd paints Howard as the arrogant, out-of-touch leader of a tired Government bogged down in the past, without a clear plan for the nation's future. "I am asking you to imagine something different," he said on the eve of the campaign.
"New leadership for the nation. New leadership for the nation's future. This is the leadership that I will offer Australia."
Rudd is now hoping for one final comparison with Blair: A landslide victory.
