Prime Minister Julia Gillard won't give up her job without a fight Prime Minister Julia Gillard faces a renewed threat to her leadership over the next eight sitting days in Parliament. SERVING political leaders do not go meekly. In recent Australian history we have had two examples of when they did. Other instances are either brutal or electorally tragic. Three years ago next weekend, then Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd accepted the reality an overwhelming majority of his colleagues had lost faith in him and no longer trusted him to lead them to a certain victory. Of course, Rudd never intended to go meekly. In fact, his refusal to test his support was part of a longer game to become the victim and provide a public posture from which to plot revenge. In March 1971, Liberal prime minister John Gorton hoisted the white flag in a typically larrikin way by voting against himself and handing the leadership to Billy McMahon. Over the coming two weeks the convention that sitting prime ministers stand and fight will again be tested. Only eight sitting days until the scheduled end of the 44th Parliament is a time frame focusing the minds of the 103 members of the Labor Caucus. The polls and every bit of anecdotal evidence says Julia Gillard's Government is heading for a defeat of historic proportions and the Prime Minister not only seems incapable of turning things around, public antipathy towards her is a heavy drag on the Labor vote. We have seen this movie before and it is likely to end the same way. Before another confected deadline - this time, the end of the parliamentary sittings - we are seeing the same activity. Rudd, the scorned leader keen for political redemption but only on his terms, ups his activity. He has spent the week mainly in western Sydney suburbs, the apparent epicentre of Labor's electoral woes, where - surprise, surprise - he is mobbed and cheered. Voters - who have mostly never understood why Rudd was punted in 2010 and dislike Gillard as a replacement - applaud the former prime minister, asking him to come back. He grins and smiles, shamelessly. Rudd supporters, worried MPs and wannabe powerbrokers whisper down telephone lines, this and that power bloc is shifting and Bill Shorten is weighing up his options or has indeed dumped Gillard. Gillard has delivered the same public and private message all week. Distilled, it is this: Talking about the leadership is wasted breath, I am the best to lead the party to the election and I am not going anywhere, anytime. When the Rudd forces shook the tree in March, and Simon Crean frightened everyone by jumping out of it without a net, it was suggested Rudd had a few more votes than he had in February, 2012, perhaps as many as 37-39. Soundings being taken by some very hard-headed counters now put the total of MPs wanting to replace Gillard as more than half of Caucus, perhaps a respectable majority. The problem is how to engineer a move. If Gillard will not surrender, what do the plotters do? If they force the issue they need a candidate and Rudd has repeated in the past 10 days there are "no circumstances" under which he'd challenge. Starting a return to the leadership by breaking your word - the major negative most voters hold against Gillard - would be an unacceptable price for Rudd to contemplate. To wander into the province of probable fantasy - that, somehow, Rudd agrees to a challenge - what happens the day after? Will Gillard's inner circle of supporters - people like Wayne Swan, Craig Emerson, Greg Combet and Brendan O'Connor - take this lying down? No, they would quit - and possibly not quietly. How would Rudd and Labor explain a change, regardless of how it might be engineered? In 2010, the change failed because of Rudd's treachery and the complete absence of an acceptable set of reasons for dumping a prime minister in the dead of night. There's no certainty it would be any different now, despite Gillard's unpopularity. In fact, there's a real risk voters would react negatively to another go-round in the leadership revolving door, as happened in NSW before the last state poll. Rudd would also have to explain how and why he would be different to Gillard. Would the party and Rudd be capable of doing that? It's an open question at best. Asked if the party's position was diabolic, a senior Labor strategist had this reply yesterday: "There's not a word for the situation we're in."