Kevin Rudd resigns as Foreign Minister. Julia Gillard calls for caucus vote for Federal Labor leader.

It's been quite a turbulent few days in national politics. Kevin Rudd was away overseas carrying out his duties as the Foreign Minister, when Simon Crean started the criticism of him as being not a team player. From that, it escalated until 22 February Australian time, when Kevin Rudd announced his resignation as Foreign Minister, saying that it would not be good to continue, as there did not seem to be strong support from the Prime Minister (Julia Gillard), as the Prime Minister did not repudiate any of the attacks on him.

As it stands, the majority of the ministers who have spoken up are in support of the current prime minster. However, Kevin Rudd appears to have the public backing of ministers Martin Ferguson, Chris Bowen and Kim Carr. Of course, it's hard to know where everyone else who didn't comment publicly stands.

As for the public on the other hand, for the past year or so, all the polling seems to suggest that Kevin Rudd is preferred by most people over Julia Gillard as the Prime Minister (and Malcolm Turnbull seems to be preferred over the current opposition leader of Tony Abbott, but that's an aside). Interestingly, I've also noticed that Kevin Rudd has a lot more followers on Twitter than Julia Gillard at the moment. At the time of writing, Kevin Rudd has 1068860 followers, which is more than five times of Julia Gillard's 185968 followers.

This number seems to be inflated very recently however; I suspect due to the recent events. When I checked towards the end of last year, Kevin Rudd had roughly double the followers of Julia Gillard. Either way, having more followers seems to suggest to me that Kevin Rudd might have more people who approve of him on the internet, which is consistent with the news polls. The other possibility of Australians having a very keen interest in Foreign Affairs compared to the Prime Ministership seems unlikely. If anything, under usual circumstances, you would think that more people would be interested in a Prime Minister than a Foreign Minister.

Anyway, it seems like if Kevin Rudd will challenge (which was not said specifically but seems likely from what he has been saying in the media), then we should know the outcome of the caucus vote next Monday. Julia Gillard says that if she loses, then she will retire to the back bench and not challenge again. Kevin Rudd is currently on a plane back to Brisbane and will arrive tomorrow morning. It will be an interesting few days ahead.