There’s a simple political calculation behind the Labor campaign’s request to Kevin Rudd that he campaign for Julia Gillard.

This election is now about whether Labor can keep the swing against it in NSW and Queensland to survivable proportions. Queensland, in particular, looks bad for Labor. Rudd, the hometown boy cut down by southern assassins, can help. Although our memories have been dimmed by two and a half years of Rudd’s executive style, he is a strong campaigner.

Every vote he shifts back to Labor in marginal seats in Queensland brings the Government closer to hanging on.

There’s also a simple matter of logistics. With Labor able to use Rudd to target Queensland and NSW marginals, the Prime Minister is freed up to spread her campaign more widely, possibly back into South Australia and Victoria where there are seats to be won by Labor.

It also makes a virtue of necessity. The media has been entirely unwilling to shift its gaze onto matters of substance from matters of personality. If the media is going to be obsessed with Rudd, Labor may as well try to use it effectively.

The risk is two-fold. It may go wrong. Rudd might stray off-message. Does he support a “sustainable Australia” rather than a “big Australia”? Does he believe the revamped MRRT is superior to the RSPT? Does he look forward to working in Cabinet with Bill Shorten? If he stumbles, there’ll be a large media contingent on hand to witness it.

It might also go wrong by going too well. What if he receives a rock-star welcome on the campaign trail? What if Kevin07 re-emerges and he starts looking superior to both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard? Yesterday’s performance – sharp, pointed, entirely lacking in Ruddesque verbosity, full of soundbites – might be a harbinger of things to come.

Still, if you’d pick a politician to remain remorselessly on-message for two weeks, it’d be Rudd. On balance, Labor should benefit from Rudd’s return, but it isn’t risk-free by any stretch.

This is where we’ve been heading ever since 24 June when Rudd decided he wanted to remain in politics and wanted to be a minister in a Gillard Government. From that point, inevitably, his own interests and those of the party that turned its back on him were inevitably going to intersect, and both sides, but the former Prime Minister in particular, were going to have to bury the pain of the events of late June.