Murdoch has declared war on Rudd by dispatching his most trusted field general, Col Allan, whose reputation is built on his closeness to Murdoch and his long history of producing pungent front-page splashes and pugnacious campaigns as editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph and, for the past 12 years, The New York Post.
Allan's mission is to help consign Rudd to the dustbin of history reserved for failed leaders.
The ramp-up of the war effort has been rapid and intense.
- Friday, July 26: the chief executive of News Corp, Robert Thomson, announced in New York that Allan would be returning to Australia to provide ''extra editorial leadership for our papers''.
- Monday, July 29: Allan is at work in Australia within 72 hours of the announcement.
- Tuesday, July 30: he begins several days of meeting with editors. The message is simple and brutal: you have been going hard on Labor but now, with Rudd's revival in the opinion polls, you have to go harder.
- Wednesday, July 31: he is reported as lunching with Lachlan Murdoch and other executives.
- Friday, August 2: The Daily Telegraph depicts Rudd in a hoodie escaping from a bank he has just robbed, with the headline: ''Rudd's $733m hoist on people's savings''.
- Yesterday, August 3, The Australian runs four negative headlines about the Rudd government on its front page alone, including ''Revealed: How Rudd blew $250bn''.
- The Daily Telegraph splashes with a front-page banner headline: ''Price of Labor - another huge budget shambles … and now we're $30bn in the red''.
- In Melbourne, the Herald-Sun took out page one with ''It's a ruddy mess''.
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