It’s pretty clear who the biggest winner from the election is. Kevin Rudd. But the biggest loser? It’s not John Howard. It’s Peter Costello.

Howard has been humiliated, but he has had 11 and a half years in the nation’s top job. He is our second longest serving prime minister. That will look good in the history books. Lists of treasurers don’t get consulted that often. John Howard has been prime minister. Peter Costello never will.

John Howard’s stubbornness contributed to the Coalition’s defeat, but Peter Costello’s weakness is just as much to blame. He put his leadership skills on display in July last year and gave us a few days of petulance and vacillation.

All the polling suggests voters only wanted a minimal change in direction. Peter Costello was too weak to try to give them that.

He will probably be leader of the opposition for a while, but the Coalition’s only winner is Malcolm Turnbull. The Coalition ran a dismal campaign. A senior Liberal source described federal director Brian Loughnane as “a dead man walking” this morning. “I’ve never seen so many yes men,” they said of Liberal strategists.

Crikey is aware of an occasion where a major corporate tried to raise climate change as an issue with Loughnane. The response was almost Sir Joh – a “Don’t you worry about that”.

The Liberals’ troubles stretch from the Party Room in Parliament House down to the grassroots of the branches. The Lindsay pamphlet farce was a direct product of the Taliban takeover of the NSW Division. The party needs a new direction.

That could be hard to define, as public language is another loser from this election.

Howard’s and Rudd’s speeches were both utterly pedestrian – our incoming prime minister’s in particular. It contained no eloquence.

Is that a sign of the real winner of this election? Will that be process? Kevin Rudd is very much the cautious bureaucrat.

He is a bureaucrat who has only sketched the barest details of the direction he has planned for the nation and dressed it up with clichés and catchphrases.

Popular and populist oversimplification and government by mission statement and media unit drives our dismal state Labor government.

Their best and brightest will soon be moving to the Ming Wing in Canberra.

If Kevin Rudd can’t give them better direction that their current bosses, we will all be losers.