NSW Labor has a new leader – and he’s from the left.

The elevation of Luke Foley tells us quite a bit about the nature of the factional divisions in the modern ALP. In a moment of candour Dick Gross, former Labor mayor of Port Phillip in Melbourne, summed up the factional divide in this way: “a faction is just a preselection machine with an ideological vacuum at its heart”.

The NSW branch has been run by the right for a very long time. Of the Labor MPs in NSW parliament, 22 are from the right, 14 from the left, and one is non-aligned. The vacuum mentioned by Gross explains why the NSW right’s members fall on their swords so that an MP from the left can get the top job.

Before Christmas, momentum was building to get rid of the right’s John Robertson from the party leadership. He was thought to be unelectable.

By 30 December, Foley was the only one of the three original contenders left standing – not because of any policy difference (none of the candidates actually outlined any), but because state secretary Jamie Clements made it clear that Foley was the right’s candidate of choice. Michael Daley and Stephen Whan, both from the right faction, withdrew on the basis that they didn’t have the numbers; it would be impossible to win the leadership without NSW head office support.

The Sussex Street machine chose Foley on an assessment that he is more electable than the other candidates – and that there is no political difference between them.

The Labor left is just as pro-business as the right. In fact, unlike his predecessor, Foley supports the privatisation of the state’s ports and derides those who might be “ideologues on privatisation” (i.e. oppose it). “A modern Labor party led by me will champion an enterprising private sector”, he told a press conference at Sydney Olympic Park in late December.

There is nothing new or peculiar to NSW about this. What difference is there between Foley’s message and Kevin Rudd’s announcement to the 2008 Victorian ALP conference that “the Australian Labor Party is now unmistakably the party of responsible economic management”?

The Labor left in the past took a stand against the Vietnam War, involved itself in extra-parliamentary campaigns and stood against divisive and discriminatory ideas. None of this is required today.

Foley used his inaugural speech to parliament in 2010 to support the “war on terror”. He criticised the “totalitarian” global Islamist movement as “misogynist, racist and homophobic” but then went on to vote against marriage equality.

His elevation to NSW Labor leader proves (as the Shorten-Albanese leadership “contest” did before it) that the appellation “left” in the ALP means nothing.