As Guido highlighted yesterday as a real possibility, the Aussie Labor Party has got rid of an unpopular leader in Kevin Rudd rather than risk certain electoral defeat. Welsh-born Julia Gillard has become leader and Australia’s first woman PM. Harriet Harman would only be human if she wistfully asked herself this morning, “what might have been…”

UPDATE : Gillard is in Labor terms a right-winger, so her British analogue would be fellow redhead Hazel Blears rather than Hattie.