London: There's something in the Australian psyche that fine tunes us for success, "seemingly in every walk of life", says British New Labour's former Svengali of political spin, Alastair Campbell.
But he doesn't count Tony Abbott in that group. The prime minister is going to be out of a job within a few months, because he has "come to power without a clear plan for government, without a clear strategy to unify his party and keep them marching on together towards shared, big goals," Tony Blair's former spin doctor said.
"We won three successive elections because we had a shared purpose, a sense of direction: a strategy.
"When in power there are clear phases: a honeymoon period where you have the goodwill of victory putting wind in the sails of change; a corrective phase, where the task is already set but you are adapting to power; and the reform phase when you are trying to set out and implement the overall plan," he said.
"All of Australia's great leaders excelled at the last of these which is why it has always punched above its weight on the world stage; at the moment, politically, it still throws punches, but none of them seem to land."
Mr Campbell has reinvented himself as an author and consultant, charging what his website describes as "the top end of the fee scale" for public speaking engagements.
His new book, Winners and How They Succeed, concludes with two case studies of outstanding success: the Queen, and Australia.
In the latter he concentrated on Australian sportspeople, who seem to consistently outperform on the world stage.
"When I talk to people like [Shane] Warne or Layne Beachley or Leigh Matthews I'm aware of certain attitudes they seem to have in common with many other Australians I know - attitudes that, taken together, mark them out a little from other nations, or at least give Australia part of its distinctiveness," Mr Campbell wrote.
He interviewed them to try to discover the secret of their success, and found they shared a "never give up [but] be prepared to fail mindset", which put a positive spin on failure and enabled them to handle it and move on. The English, by comparison, are more conservative and reserved, and early failure tends to leave a scar.
It may have come from Australia's convict ancestry, which led to an emphasis on equality and egalitarianism, Mr Campbell mused. That in turn led to better teamwork, and a correlation between the national identity and a desire to win.
"I'm not saying Australia is perfect - there is still too much casual sexism and racism - but the spirit of mateship has, to my mind, various very positive ramifications," he wrote.
Mr Campbell told Fairfax Media he hadn't picked Australia as a case study before writing the book, but while researching it he had been taken aback by the extraordinary attitude of its sportsmen and women.
"I started to realise that Australians tend to tick the boxes [for qualities that engender success]," he said. "Obviously you can't generalise for a whole country but you do have a sense that Australia has a much more 'winning' mindset than a lot of countries."
Mr Campbell said there seemed to be a "gene in the Australian DNA" that makes them very competitive.
His book identifies resilience as a big factor in winners, "and I think you've got that. I love the thing that Shane Warne said about 'give me the ball and if I stuff up, I stuff up'."
"And I think the Layne Beachley story – to be honest I'd never heard of her – but she's one of the most amazing people I've ever come across."
However it doesn't mean every Australian is destined for success.
"There are certain qualities you're born with – the question is what you do with them."
Mr Campbell's book has received mixed reviews.
London's Financial Times found "some powerful lessons about ego and arrogance" in the book, but pointed out there were 9607 business books with the word "leadership" in the title, most of which are "equally as gung-ho" as Mr Campbell's unoriginal work.
Reviewer Lucy Kellaway said "The real difficulty, as Campbell acknowledges, is that all these winners [profiled in the book] are entirely different. So when, at the end, he has to produce the promised blueprint, it is so lame that he has the grace to admit it is a bit obvious. Indeed, in this respect it reminds me of the self-help book in Family Guy written by Brian the dog: Wish It, Want It, Do It."
And The Guardian mocked it with a "digested read" – John Crace summarising Mr Campbell's theory as "Winners need to be resilient, have a good command of the facts and be good in a crisis. Who'd have thought it? I have been involved in a few political crises in my time and have always come out on top by bullying people, shouting a lot and being entirely economical with the truth."
