Only Tony Abbott can fix what Malcolm Turnbull broke in the Liberal Party

MALCOLM Turnbull is finished as PM and Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop are tarred by their link to him. Only Tony Abbott can save the Liberals, writes Andrew Bolt.

TONY Abbott must return as leader of the shattered Liberals after Saturday’s election disaster.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull out, Abbott in — even if journalists still sneer.

True, Abbott ideally needs months more to repair the image that a smart-arse media tore to shreds, feeding off his sometimes dumb mistakes. But who else but Abbott could hope to fix what Turnbull has just smashed?

This election result has been a near-total catastrophe for the Liberals, who have been left without a mandate, platform, unity, honour or real power after letting Turnbull hijack their party last year.

Turnbull, a man of the ABC Left, then ditched the Liberals’ base, Liberal principles and even the Liberals’ party colours to campaign on virtually nothing but a fantasy tax cut for business.

Now look at the smoking ruin. The Government will most likely lose its huge majority in the House of Representatives, leaving it clinging to the votes of smaller parties to stay in power. Indeed, it could still lose.

In the Senate, where it was already in the minority, it has gone backwards, with many disgruntled conservatives voting instead for Pauline Hanson.

This is such a humiliation that it’s not just finished off Turnbull, but crippled the two henchmen once thought his likely successors, Treasurer Scott Morrison and Deputy Leader Julie Bishop.

Morrison takes the blame for the disastrous superannuation tax grab that outraged so many Liberal supporters and for not properly developing or arguing the Coalition’s economic policies. As for Bishop, she has again been exposed as a lightweight, not least by being totally clueless in trying to explain the Liberals’ super policy on radio. This serial survivor has also made the phrase “loyal deputy” the biggest joke in a party that knows her better as a Lady Macbeth, but without the scruples.

Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop have had their succession hopes crippled.

Take that trio away, and who is left to lead? The answer is clearly Tony Abbott.

You’re laughing? Well, let’s first agree on the obvious: that Malcolm Turnbull is gone as Prime Minister and should gracefully resign before he does even more damage.

For a start, he is finished for showing the same appalling political judgment that killed him as Opposition leader, too. For instance, why did Turnbull white-ant and then tear down Abbott last September on a promise to lead the Liberals to triumph, a promise he clearly could not deliver? Why did he waste his first seven months as Prime Minister dithering on plans to raise the GST and other madcap schemes, proving to the public that he lacked convictions and guts?

Why did he not call an early election in, say, February, when his popularity was still high? Why did he call it at the very moment he fell behind in the polls? Why did he call a double-dissolution election that made it easier for minor parties to clog up the Senate, as they’ve done?

Why did he not campaign on big Liberal strengths — Labor leader Bill Shorten’s planned electricity tax and his dodgy record as a union boss of accepting donations from businesses covered by his union?

Why did he campaign instead on a pathetic “10-year plan” that was little more than a tax cut for business that stretched over an improbable decade?

Why did he treat the Liberals’ base as trash, smashing it with a huge tax grab on superannuation, repeatedly snubbing Abbott and talking up almost every social cause of the Left, from same-sex marriage to global warming?

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Why did he call the colonial settlement of Australia an “invasion”, hold an Iftar dinner with known Muslim hate-preachers during the election campaign or tell (now Senator-elect) Pauline Hanson she was not a “welcome presence” in Parliament?

Why did he ban conservative journalists, preferring the company of the Leftist ABC?

All that already explains why the Liberals must ditch Turnbull before he turns near-defeat into a rout.

But there’s now even more reason he should step aside, because this election result has exposed him to even his media puffers as a fraud.

He now has no real authority even within his party. He was never liked or trusted and now that he’s failed to deliver the clear victory he promised, the contract is broken.

With the numbers in Parliament so tight, almost any Coalition MP could thwart any Turnbull plan simply by crossing the floor to vote against it and would laugh at any lecture on loyalty.

Faith in Turnbull’s once-fabled communications skills and popularity, let alone his judgment, is so low that MPs wouldn’t trust him to sell life insurance to the dying, let alone legislation to the public or a hostile Senate.

But there is one more factor that shows Turnbull is a broken man.

Anyone who witnessed his embarrassing speech on election night can see this disaster has destroyed him not only politically but psychologically. He raged at the Labor lies on Medicare he claimed had fooled the voters who’d rejected him. Deluded and almost deranged, he angrily insisted he would form a majority government and it would be “stable”.

There was not a word of apology or humility from Turnbull and no expressed sympathy either for the dozen or more colleagues who’d lost their seats through his colossal bungling.

No, he was typically concerned with just one person — himself — and was desperately blaming everyone else for having turned Abbott’s huge victory at the last election into Turnbull’s meanest of victories, or possibly defeat.

Malcolm Turnbull speaking yesterday. Picture: Chris Pavlich

Turnbull, always brittle, is simply not capable of dealing with what now confronts him — and not least with the ridicule of the press pack that cheered him into the job last year.

True, Abbott is not the perfect answer. His public image is bad and many journalists have banked their reputation on painting him as an idiot. Still, he’s acknowledged his mistakes and time is making him seem better already. Almost every member of a focus group shown on Sky News last week praised Abbott as a man of conviction, as opposed to Turnbull’s flim flam.

Abbott is also a far better campaigner than Turnbull, able to hammer home messages as the Wentworth Waffler never could. In fact, Abbott won big swings in the two campaigns he led and Turnbull has in his first lost almost the lot.

But the Liberals need not just a leader to win over the voters but to unite the party Turnbull has torn apart.

Remember, Turnbull fought this election on two fronts — with Labor on the Left and mutinous Liberals on the Right. His harshest critics were conservative commentators.

Few could now heal the party as Abbott could. Note the muted applause for Turnbull at recent party conferences and, in contrast, the cheers for Abbott.

And if he’s still not your candidate to lead the battered Liberals, tell me who is?

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