Losers’ claims to be winners ignore facts

Malcolm Turnbull claiming colleagues punted him because he was going to win the next election and Julie Bishop saying she would have beaten Bill Shorten reek of selective amnesia, writes Peta Credlin.

You can see why they were the dynamic duo, can’t you?

Mr Harbourside Mansion, over in London last week, telling the BBC that his colleagues punted him last August, not because he was going to lose the upcoming election but because — wait for it — he was going to win it.

Even without knowing the detail of his record — the 38 consecutive Newspoll losses, the lacklustre campaigning ability, indeed, the 14 seats lost at his one and only election as leader — the journalist interviewing Malcolm Turnbull was incredulous.

He even had to check that he heard it correctly because over there, as here, it’s a rare politician who won’t do, as Graham Richardson says, “whatever it takes” to survive.

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But on he went. Clearly still wallowing in self-pity, the former PM lashed out, calling it an “Australian madness” that had gripped his colleagues when, for the second time in nine years, they voted to terminate his leadership of the Liberal Party.

Malcolm Turnbull unloads on the Liberal Party on the BBC's Politics Live.

Talk about selective amnesia! Live by the sword, die by the sword. Does he honestly think people have forgotten how he got there in the first place, even if he has?

But he wasn’t the only one to want to rewrite history. For much of the week, there was conjecture and debate about Julie Bishop’s explosive claim in a tell-all interview that she would have beaten Bill Shorten if only her colleagues hadn’t conspired to keep her out of the top job when Turnbull fell.

Here’s the harsh political reality — no politician can expect to win over 50 per cent of the electorate when they can’t get even get 15 per cent of their party room.

If Bishop was serious about a tilt at the leadership, she should have used her prerogative as deputy to move to a domestic portfolio of her choosing after the 2016 election, as colleagues cited her lack of experience as a real impediment.

That and the fact a pair of her celebrated shoes cost more than the weekly minimum wage. Making her an easy target for Bill Shorten, and mincemeat for the ACTU’s Sally McManus.