Party Games: Things are going to get ugly in Liberal ranks
OPINION: Malcolm Turnbull has more to fear than the glacial speed of the vote count.
Analysis
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A WEEK ago the most pressing issue on Malcolm Turnbull’s mind seemed to be whether he should reach for some spinach.
“Should I wilt something green in this?” Turnbull asked no one in particular on Annabel Crabb’s Kitchen Cabinet as he stirred some ravioli in homemade passata.
The days of wilting greens are long gone as Turnbull and his shattered political party look at the mess around them.
Turnbull is clinging to office as the count in the dead-heat election moves at a glacial speed.
The Prime Minister is in office in name but he faces more threats than Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo when the British and Prussians surrounded and crushed the French leader.
He may be denied being knifed by his colleagues if Labor can inch ahead of the Coalition in the call of the card in the House of Representatives where it is now all but certain neither side can get to a majority.
That’s at least a 50/50 proposition and if Bill Shorten does become Prime Minister, Turnbull will have no option but to walk the plank — anything else would redefine delusion.
However, if Turnbull and the Coalition stay in front of Labor and he tries to form a minority government he’ll have to deal with unprecedented structural fractures in the Liberal Party — and more broadly the conservative side of politics.
The Labor Party has had more than a century of dealing with institutional groups — or factions — which coalesce to form a united front. Those in the Left and Right of the ALP can happily hate each other and have blood feuds but they know how to come together and make nice.
The Liberals have had personality splits before and there are loose groupings of “moderates” and “conservatives” but there hasn’t been the kind of tectonic shift the failed Turnbull experiment has produced.
There is every sign things are going to get very ugly, very quickly in Liberal ranks with the hollering from bitter losers morphing into outright political warfare.
Don’t miss Dennis Atkins and Malcolm Farr’s election podcast Two Grumpy Hacks, available for free on iTunes or Soundcloud.
Originally published as Party Games: Things are going to get ugly in Liberal ranks
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