As I tap out the words “net zero by 2050”, I can almost hear you clicking on the travel section for escapism or a Sudoku puzzle in which to bury your head.

The question of whether the Liberal Party should dump its commitment to reach this emissions target, under intense duress from the Nationals, is the latest instalment of an argument without end, an ideological struggle over climate action that feels like a ceaseless fight. The temptation is to tread the dark path of cliche by saying we have seen this movie before, multiple times. But this feels more like pulling from the shelf a tattered VHS box set of vintage daytime Aussie soaps that first aired when televisions came in wooden casings.

What makes this required viewing, at a time when Labor enjoys such a commanding majority and regaining power looks for the Coalition like a six-year rather than three-year project, is not so much the policy as the posturing and positioning. For the Liberals, the question of whether they should be dictated to by the National Party is secondary.

Whether Sussan Ley can survive Canberra’s ritualistic pre-Christmas “killing season” is not the primary concern. Uppermost is the more existential question of whether the Liberals should remain a party of the centre-right or lurch to the populist right. The net zero emissions target has become the most emblematic issue: the defining marker of political identity. That is what this saga is truly about.

There is a political rationale for moving rightwards. In the latest Newspoll survey, the Coalition slumped to just 24 per cent, its worst ever poll. That suggests Ley’s moderate conservatism has limited appeal – although so far, she has put little flesh on the bones of her political philosophy and she is more probably being judged on her tactical stumbles, such as calling for the sacking of Kevin Rudd. There has also been a surge towards One Nation, which has now reached 15 per cent in two separate polls, which is above its previous peak of 13 per cent in 1998.

Beyond these shores, nationalistic populism, often with racist overtones, looks to be on an unstoppable march. In Germany, the far-right Alternative For Germany party has for the first time overtaken the moderate Christian Democrats. National Rally is ahead in France. In Britain, Reform UK is leading the polls, and trouncing the Conservative Party under a black female leader, Kemi Badenoch.

Then, of course, there is Donald Trump, who a year ago this week became the first Republican since 2004 to win the nationwide popular vote, railing against wokeism, diversity, equity and inclusion, an immigrant “invasion” and the “hoax” of global warming. This week, Pauline Hanson ventriloquised that exact word, “hoax”, when she delivered a fiery speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, held in the gilded ballroom of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has fans Down Under, foremost among them Gina Rinehart. The billionaire Liberal donor was also a guest, like Hanson, at the Mar-a-Lago Halloween Party, and wants the Liberals to go MAGA. “Don’t you just love the saying ‘drill baby drill?’,” the mining magnate said during a speech at National Mining and Related Industries Day in November last year. Tellingly, she also assailed “LINOs” (“Liberals in Name Only”), a reworking of the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) mocked by Trump.

“Climate weaklings” is what the conservative lobby group Advance has taken to calling Liberals who support the net zero target. “Angel power” is how Barnaby Joyce now describes solar and wind energy.

Right-wingers who believe populism offers a quick route back to power could even point to how voting allegiances have become more fluid in recent election cycles, which means mammoth parliamentary majorities offer no guarantee of re-election. Just look at Anthony Albanese’s mate, Keir Starmer. After winning a landslide victory as recently as 2024, his unpopular Labour government is languishing way behind Reform UK in the polls. With eyes affixed on the US and Europe, it is easy to be seduced by what’s being called the Great Realignment of conservative parties.

The problem with Great Realignment thinking is that it ignores the political contours of the great southern land: the electoral system, electoral geography, electoral demographics and recent electoral history. Put more bluntly, it defies Australian electoral reality and wilfully disregards the outcome of a federal election held only six months ago.

Under the hard-right leadership of Peter Dutton, the Liberal Party slumped to its worst defeat in 80 years. The Liberals suffered a near wipeout in the cities, winning just nine out of the 88 seats classified as metropolitan. The Coalition garnered less than a third of the female vote. Liberal support among younger voters, the generations most energised by climate change, has cratered.

The Nationals, in such an urbanised electorate, are never going to offset losses in the cities. These include once-safe blue-ribbon Liberal seats won by teals and independents, which are populated by voters who drive Teslas but detest Elon Musk’s noxious populist emissions. It is a measure of the challenge facing the Liberals that seats once held by Robert Menzies, John Howard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull are all in the hands either of independents or Labor.

As for the Trump playbook, which defied political orthodoxy partly by boosting turnout among Americans alienated by conventional party politics, it is not so impactful in a polity with compulsory voting. Here, it feels more like fantasy politics. Magical thinking. The Australian system rewards parties of the mainstream, and net zero by 2050 has mainstream support. The same poll that showed the worst ever result for the Liberals also indicated a 44-27 per cent margin in favour of net zero by 2050. Even among the dwindling band of Coalition supporters, 38 per cent were in favour (35 per cent were opposed).

The wretched climate wars are the key to understanding the chronic stand-stillism that has beset Australia in the 21st century.

Ley faces a lose-lose conundrum. Because of the backlash from metropolitan voters, dumping net zero runs the risk of turning the self-styled natural party of government into the self-sabotaged natural party of prolonged opposition. Not dumping net zero, or somehow fudging it, could produce the same outcome, given the possibility of divorce with the Nationals, the potential boost for One Nation and the chaos that would ensue in her party room. No wonder we talk of the “glass cliff”, where women often assume leadership positions at times of crisis with no good options available.

Her position seems both impossible and untenable. Mutterings from within her party room this week suggested she would survive the killing season but that she would be ousted some time in 2026. Four men – Andrew Hastie, Ted O’Brien, Angus Taylor and Tim Wilson – are jostling to spearhead the survival mission of winning back female voters. Good luck with that.

Always it is worth recalling the self-defeating politics of climate change contributed to the demise of Howard, Turnbull (twice), Abbott and Scott Morrison, who never recovered from his handling of the 2019 bushfire emergency. Internecine disputes over environmental policy, whether it involved ratifying Kyoto or creating an emissions trading scheme, go a long way towards explaining why the reform era of the late 20th century turned into the revenge era of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years.

Likewise, the wretched climate wars are the key to understanding the chronic stand-stillism that has beset Australia in the 21st century. Time and again, the smallness of intra- and inter-party politics has got in the way of the country achieving big things, especially on climate action. Australia should already have become a renewables global powerhouse, and yet this endless struggle, and the uncertainty it has created for investors in clean energy, has repeatedly got in the way. The last quarter-century has been a phase of national underachievement. Here, all the parties, including the Greens, are to blame.

As for the Liberals, the wrangling over net zero highlights an identity crisis that reaches back to the end of the Howard era. Turnbull was too much of an environmentalist to mould the party in his image. Abbott was too much of a climate sceptic. Morrison so often came across as a slick, sloganeering PR man, “Scotty from Marketing”. Dutton’s hardline conservatism was electorally catastrophic.

Since Howard, no leader has fashioned a Liberal brand that could win the party consecutive election victories. The party isn’t only contending with the implications of Trumpism. It has never truly contended with the end of Howardism.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC correspondent, is author of The Rise and Fall of Australia: How a Great Nation Lost Its Way.