Larvatus Prodeo

It’s probably time to take stock again of the Liberal leadership spill shenanigans.

John Howard has obviously been having a word in a few journos’ ears. Tony Wright penned this piece for The Age yesterday, portraying the Ghost of Wollstonecraft as pulling the strings. It seems Little Johnny couldn’t stand Nick Minchin and the Minchkins getting all the credit for tearing Turnbull down.

I think Hockey’s pilgrimage to Howard on Saturday was staged to suggest that he’s the true heir to the throne, and to imply that Turnbull was an unfortunate interloper. None of those ‘progressive’ hymns in Howard’s broad church! Had they wanted to meet covertly, it wouldn’t have been too hard.

Alex White wrote yesterday on Turnbull’s Cameronisation. If it’s all about following scripts, the Tories’ recent one wouldn’t be a bad one to follow. After all, turning away from the right and talking up green issues has contributed to reviving the UK Conservatives’ electoral chances.

Hockey is obviously keeping his powder dry, so that he can claim he is a unity candidate by not bringing on a spill. That’s the sort of dissimulation for which Howard is famous, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to bring it off. It’s his second time around as a cuddly frontman for nasty things (think WorkChoices), and he made a hash of it the first time. (See also Peter Martin on his record.) All the talk of some sort of cunning Keating like strategy against the Rudd government’s CPRS forgets that Keating was a superb politician. Hockey is not.

He simply isn’t up to the task, and he probably knows it. He won’t have a lot of credibility as a puppet leader papering over the cracks of a deeply divided party, and it would be risible to think that the events of the last week won’t come back to haunt the Liberals. All talk of Sunrise aside, Rudd’s political machine will eat him for breakfast.

Whether the Liberals would be able to agree on some sort of alternative if the CPRS bills are delayed til February is moot. Certainly all their divisions over climate change will not magically disappear even if Malcolm is whisked off the scene.

It’s not over til it’s over, of course, but speculation has increasingly turned to Turnbull leaving the party and/or parliament. Whatever he decides to do, the ‘dead man walking’ of the press gallery commentary circa early last week (and haven’t some changed their tune?) will come out of all this looking pretty good in many people’s eyes.

Possum’s extremely interesting analysis of the Nielsen poll demonstrates that Turnbull has been appealling to precisely the voters that the Liberals need to be in with any chance of winning the next election – ones currently inclined to vote Labor. I’d have thought that was a lot more meaningful for a serious political party than some sort of ‘protect the furniture and play to the base’ strategy. There’s lots more in Possum’s post which should provide a reality check in terms of how all this has played in the public’s eyes. Liberal MPs and Senators might be well advised to consider that.

Stay tuned for further updates, and you can follow the thing on Twitter as well.

Elsewhere: Some interesting personal reflections on Malcolm Turnbull from Christopher Joye.

Update: New post on firming speculation that Turnbull intends to lead a new party should he lose tomorrow.