Column - Gillard saved by lack of alternative gift plan.

Only one thing saves Julia Gillard from being knifed. It’s that poor Labor doesn’t have an obvious alternative gift plan.

She’s so shrunk in the job, that she took a football to her first White House meeting with the US President.

And Labor's harder heads are going soft with one suggesting flowers.The powerbrokers, in despair at the gift dilemma, don’t realise it still wasn’t a mistake to make her Prime Minister then - and won’t be a mistake to get her PA to do the shopping.

The fact is, it’s now too obvious to ignore, what I note here every day: that Gillard is finished.