Cory Bernardi set to quit Libs with Malcolm Turnbull facing a party split

MALCOLM Turnbull’s nightmare start to his make-or-break year is about to get a whole lot worse, writes Andrew Bolt.

MALCOLM Turnbull’s nightmare start to his make-or-break year is about to get a whole lot worse.

The Prime Minister now faces a split in the Liberal Party as early as this week.

The high-profile Senator Cory Bernardi is almost certain to quit the Liberals and start his own conservative party.

It would be based on his Australian Conservatives movement, which already has more than 50,000 members.

Bernardi is likely to split much sooner than later, and not just because it would be awkward to face questions from his colleagues in the party room this week when parliament resumes.

More importantly, Turnbull and US President Donald Trump have made this the perfect time to start a new party for conservative Liberals fed up with the Turnbull regime.

Bernardi has turned down all interviews lately, which is significant, but the logic all points to him breaking away soon.

This could be fatal for Turnbull, who is already badly weakened.

Malcolm Turnbull’s attempts to start this political year with a reset have been a disaster.

He has been unable to stop hundreds of thousands of Liberal voters from switching to the more Right-wing Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party, now with an astonishing 10 per cent support in the Essential poll. The Liberals’ primary vote has meanwhile slumped to just 32 per cent.

Turnbull’s attempts to start this political year with a reset have been a disaster.

Last Wednesday, he blew himself up in his big speech at the National Press Club, meant to rally the faithful.

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Not only was his speech too dull, Turnbull farcically promised more transparency to political donations only to refuse minutes later to reveal the size of his own donation to the Liberals.

Hours later, Turnbull tried to end the laughter by going on the ABC and finally admitting he’d donated $1.75 million. The result: this, rather than his speech, dominated the next day’s media.

Then came news of Turnbull’s embarrassing brawl on the phone with Trump.

Trump has been understandably furious about a deal Turnbull sealed with then president Barack Obama just five days after Trump’s election on November 8 — a deal to send 1250 of our boat people to the US.

This was bound to embarrass the new president, who’d repeatedly promised during the election campaign to crack down on refugees from the Middle East.

Not only did Trump end their call 35 minutes early, but his spokesman then called our prime minister “Trumbull”.

All this already makes Turnbull a perfect target for Bernardi, who won’t want to take the risk of waiting and having the Liberals switch back to a more able and conservative leader — either Tony Abbott or Peter Dutton.

Senator Cory Bernardi is almost certain to quit the Liberals. Picture: Ray Strange

Bernardi’s pitch to disgruntled conservative Liberals would work much better while the Liberals are still led by a weakened man of the Left.

But if Bernardi needed any more encouragement to split now, Left-wing Liberal MPs gave it over the weekend by urging the Liberals to break their election promise to have a people’s vote to decide on same-sex marriage.

Turnbull, himself, has not ruled out letting politicians decide the issue instead.

What a gift for Bernardi, a Christian opposed to same-sex marriage.

Here are MPs ready to break another promise. Ready to strip voters of the power to decide for themselves. Ready to pander again to minority identity groups. Eager to drag the Liberals further Left.

This symbolises everything Bernardi has been fighting against, and everything that has made the mainstream parties contemptible to so many voters, particularly conservatives.

What are these MPs thinking? Didn’t Trump’s win against the elites teach them anything?

Nervous Liberal MPs have asked me if they could still persuade Bernardi to stay in the party. Answer: no. The Liberals — even Abbott — have unfairly treated him as too extreme to make a minister. As a backbench Liberal senator from South Australia, he has relatively little influence on policy and cannot rock the party boat too much by speaking up, despite being one of our most articulate politicians.

But as the leader of his own party, he will be free to say exactly what he thinks, and his Senate vote now becomes one that the Liberals must woo to win. He also has five years left of his Senate term, and a great shot at being re-elected after that.

Last year, Bernardi spent three months in New York at the United Nations and was inspired to see what one confident man could achieve by calling it just as he saw it.

That man was Donald Trump, and any day now we may see Bernardi start the closest thing to a Trump party here.

Originally published as Cory Bernardi set to quit Libs with Malcolm Turnbull facing a party split