Turnbull must eat humble pie when numbers crunched

ANOTHER Newspoll loss will be embarrassing for the PM. But this far from an election, it’s also meaningless, writes Miranda Devine. Turnbull’s only way forward is to get on with the job of beating Labor.

I BRAVED a lion’s den of delcons last week to speak in a debate for the Menzies Research Centre spruiking Donald Trump.

It was all very civilised and amusing, and the people having the most fun were chanting “30 Newspolls” every time the Prime Minister’s name was mentioned.

The countdown to the Turnbull government’s expected 30th Newspoll loss tomorrow has been terribly exciting for political junkies.

The Spectator magazine’s artistic director Sarah Dudley captured the Zeitgeist beautifully with a cover titled “Three Billboards outside Canberra, ACT”, and an illustration of Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull in a convertible, hurtling down a highway past big red billboards counting down “28” “29” “30”, as Lucy tells her grimacing husband: “It’s your Me Too moment”.

And that’s all it is. Nothing changes. It’s embarrassing for the PM, a symbolic egg in the face and his just desserts for knocking off a first term prime minister.

But, actually, considering the disunity and universally bad press his government gets, it’s astonishing the polls aren’t worse. In the year before John Howard lost office, Labor was getting 61 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in Newspoll. Under Bill Shorten Labor can’t do better than 54 per cent. John Howard fared worse in Newspoll before elections he won, as did Hawke and Keating.

So Newspoll is meaningless this far out from an election.

But it was Turnbull’s own silliness which elevated a mere opinion poll into an existential measure of leadership back in September 2015: “We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row. It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott’s leadership.”

I’ll bet barely a day goes by that he doesn’t regret that statement.

He admitted as much last year when he told me: “I do regret having said it only because it allowed people to focus on that, rather than substantive reasons”.

Bad blood is the inevitable consequence of regicide, so Turnbull can hardly complain out loud about Abbott’s relentless insurgency.

He will just have to eat humble pie and get on with the job of beating Shorten. That is the only path to redemption.