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Well, Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberal Party is well and truly over. How do we know? Because her colleagues are insisting she has “100 per cent support”. That’s the sure kiss of political death.
The leadership issue has been simmering for months. Of course, taking the leadership of a party after a devastating election result is always a poisoned chalice. Think of the fated careers of Bill Hayden, Andrew Peacock, Alexander Downer, Simon Crean, Brendan Nelson… It’s an unenviable job whose only point is to take the political hits and keep the seat warm while the next leader waits for the opportune moment to strike.
But even in such a notoriously unforgiving job, Ley has made an unforgivable hash of it. The Albanese government should be the most target-rich for any opposition, but the coalition have instead spent the past nine months sniping at each other. As a result, one of the worst governments in Australian history has been allowed to get away with murder.
Key case in point: on the very day the Labor government passed a near-universally hated censorship bill, the coalition took every skerrick of media attention away by announcing their second melodramatic split in six months.
Ley’s leadership has seen a long-running battle for the soul of the Liberal Party become an existential crisis. The fundamental question is: do the Libs continue as the centre-right, small-c conservative party of Menzies and Howard, or does it become just a green-left fringe party for the idle rich ‘doctor’s wives’ faction of Sydney and Melbourne’s Old Money suburbs?
For the past 10 years, the so-called ‘moderates’ faction (in reality, dripping-wet, lettuce leaf, wannabe Greens) have relentlessly steered the party toward the latter. Ley, queen of the ‘moderates’, is driving the party to the rocks of green-left irrelevance faster than a DEI-hire lesbian navy captain.
The question is whether the conservative wing of the party will finally man up and put forward a credible, actually conservative, leader?
After the dramatic split between the Liberals and Nationals last week, Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie are circling as challengers.
Taylor would be by far the worse choice.
While supporters of Andrew Hastie are claiming top conservatives are privately endorsing his ambitions to be Liberal leader, allies of Mr Taylor say the Right faction is evenly split and the Hume MP is gaining traction among moderates and centrists who last year were leaning towards shifting their support from Ms Ley to Mr Hastie.
When ‘moderates and centrists’ (translation: ‘dripping wet and merely wet’) are backing Taylor, you know Hastie’s the man for the job.
Key supporters of Mr Hastie are claiming such vast support within the conservative faction that they predict Mr Taylor will drop his leadership ambitions this week.
The two potential candidates have had recent phone conversations and are expected to talk further this week.
Mr Hastie’s backers are predicting a spill as early as next week, while Mr Taylor’s allies say a challenge may not come until closer to the May budget.
Conservative powerbrokers do not want Mr Hastie or Mr Taylor to split the faction by running against each other, arguing that an agreement for one to drop their ambitions would depend on who could demonstrate they had the most support.
At least we can thank the political gods for small blessings.
Liberal frontbencher Tim Wilson says he won’t throw his hat into the ring along with contenders Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor in the event of a leadership spill.
Wilson is one of the soggiest of the ‘moderates’.
Meanwhile, Ley is putting on a brave face, even as the good ship Liberal Party grinds its keel on the rocks.
Ms Ley’s allies say she retains majority partyroom support and there was a “zero per cent chance” of her standing down or not contesting a ballot if a spill motion were to succeed […]
The formal position of the moderate faction is to back Ms Ley “to the end”, but several MPs in the grouping have shifted support to either Mr Hastie or Mr Taylor […]
A moderate powerbroker said there were conversations within the faction about who to support if Ms Ley were knocked out of a three-way contest or chose to resign from the leadership, arguing there was “new momentum” for Mr Taylor within the grouping.
Rule of thumb: whatever the ‘moderates’ support, any sensible Liberal ought to run away from as fast as possible.
But ‘sensible Liberal’ is very much an oxymoron, these days.
