Maybe she realises she's just not a PM

David Burchell on the shrinking of Julia Gillard:

Labor's pervasive loss of self-confidence and conviction is mirrored in Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose demeanour, the longer she has occupied her post, seems to have become steadily less spontaneous and more mechanical, with a dirge-like quality that seems to mimic her party's sense of political stiffness and decay.

Much of the new-found enthusiasm for Anna Bligh is perhaps really a negative comparison with the Prime Minister, who seemed so awkward in her performance of official sympathy during the Queensland floods, even as the Premier revelled in her re-absorption into everyday life.

Nowadays Gillard's speeches seem punctuated by an uncomfortable tincture of self-embarrassment, as though the sentiments sound hollow even to her own ears - even though it is her own severe honesty that forces her to focus on the exercise of mere political competence.