The two weaknesses that brought Malcolm Turnbull undone

HOW is it that Malcolm Turnbull has been torn down when the polls showed he still had a decent chance of being re-elected? As a politician, he had two weaknesses which, in the end, he could never overcome, writes James Campbell.

HOW is it that Malcolm Turnbull, Rhodes Scholar, successful journalist, successful barrister, successful merchant banker and successful venture capitalist has been torn down when the polls showed he still had a decent chance of being re-elected?

As a politician, Turnbull had two weaknesses which, in the end, he could never overcome.

The first was that coming to the game so late in life — he was elected to parliament at 50 — meant he had never had the apprenticeship that would have given him the skills and experience to survive in a parliamentary democracy.

FRIDAY LIBSPILL LIVE: SCOMO OUR NEW PM

ANDREW BOLT: CAN MORRISON END LIBS’ CIVIL WAR?

Skills and experience whose absence you can’t overcome no matter how much talent or natural political instinct you possess.

His second weakness, which flowed from his first, was his lack of understanding of the ways of the Liberal Party.

In the past this perhaps wouldn’t have mattered so much. In the 1920s Stanley Bruce was successfully parachuted into parliament and the leadership of the non-Labor party of the day.

Turnbull’s misfortune was to be the leader of the Liberal Party when non-Labor politics is riven between those who are comfortable and relaxed with the social changes that began in the 1970s and the economic reforms of the 1980s and 90s and those who are uncomfortable with the status quo and would seek to use the party as a vehicle to remake Australia into a more socially conservative, economically populist nation.

As a politician, Malcolm Turnbull had two weaknesses which, in the end, he could never overcome. Picture: Kym Smith

Turnbull’s wealth and evident comfort with the elite of Australian society would once have fitted the Liberal Party like a hand in a glove.

But in the past few years, elements of the Liberal Party and the wider conservative movement in this country have come to regard the rich elites as out of touch from the values they believe to exist in some magical Australian hinterland.

And, as we saw with the results in the same-sex marriage debate which showed the biggest “yes” votes achieved in seats held by sitting Liberal MPs, no amount of evidence of the disconnect between the views of Liberal Party’s “base” and the people who actually vote for it will convince them they are in danger of making it unelectable.

It is always tempting to draw conclusions about what these votes mean for the direction of political parties when the reality is sometimes MPs make their choice based personality, self-interest and factional reasons that have nothing to do with ideas.

But on this occasion, while it is clear that the end of Malcolm Turnbull’s reign means the Liberal Party has rejected his species of centrism, it is also clear that in choosing Scott Morrison rather than Peter Dutton it has decided it is not yet ready to throw the switch to fullbore populist conservatism.

[e-mail]