Now’s the time to come to the aid of the party. (And then along came Tim)

Among the more diverting interventions in what we might call the rolling road-smash that is the Victorian Liberal Party, was an opinion piece published during the week by this masthead and penned by Tim Smith, a fellow not entirely unfamiliar with the misfortune of a car crash himself.

His opinion was published under the arresting headline “Without dumping its cult of has-been leaders, Victoria’s Liberals don’t stand a chance”.

Smith was, of course, commenting upon what many believe will be another leadership spill in the continuing series of gutsers that have distinguished the Victorian Liberals since approximately the time of the last dinosaur (with the greatest respect to Jeff Kennett).

The hapless current leader, John Pesutto, is the eighth Liberal leader in Victoria this century, if you count Matthew Guy twice.

That’s quite a bag of has-beens, particularly when only two of them, Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine, actually managed to reach the dizzy heights of state premier.

You’d never accuse the brash Smith of possessing a sense of irony, of course.

But, my, doesn’t his advice about dumping has-been leaders take the concept into the realm of the positively burlesque?

Tim Smith is the living embodiment of a would-be leader who became a has-been before he even reached the status of coulda-been.

Tim Smith faces the media four days after his 2021 car crash sent his leadership ambitions down the gurgler.Credit: Justin McManus

He even took the trouble of confessing in his opinion piece that he was, when he had the chance, a complete duffer as king-maker.

“Having moved the spill motion that led to Matthew Guy and David Southwick being elected leader and deputy [in September 2021], I know something of these matters,” he wrote. “In hindsight, it wasn’t the smartest move, as they both performed poorly.”

Quite.

Smith, for those with medium-term memories, was a Victorian Liberal MP with shamelessly naked ambition until a fateful Saturday evening in October 2021 when, pie-eyed after dinner, he navigated his new Jaguar into the front fence of a home in Hawthorn.

Unsurprisingly, having blown a blood-alcohol reading that was more than twice the legal limit, he resigned as shadow attorney-general, an office to which he had risen only a month previously.

Though any leadership to which he aspired had clearly gone down the gurgler, he hung around as the member for Kew before it finally dawned upon him that it wasn’t in anyone’s interests to recontest the 2022 election.

Tim’s Smith’s car after crashing into a Hawthorn property in October 2021.Credit: Olivia and Charlotte Neish

These days, with his old parliamentary party in yet another of its pointless bouts of oiled-up wrestling, Tim spends much of his time in Britain. There, he is attached to the right-wing TV station GB News, an outfit a bit similar to Australia’s Sky News, which is not awfully surprising, considering GB’s CEO is Angelos Frangopoulos, who ran Sky Australia until 2018.

Smith’s most recent outing, he tells us, was to the British Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, where the latest batch of would-be Tory leaders exposed their wares to the party membership.

He describes this exercise as the party “working methodically through an organised and agreed process to select a new leader”.

He writes approvingly that “the importance each leadership contender places on directing their message at the membership – as importantly as wooing colleagues – should not be underestimated”.

Considering the last four Tory leaders have been such duds, this seems courageous.

Let’s see: Theresa May, whose first move as PM was to hold a snap election to strengthen her position on Brexit, and instead, led her government into a hung parliament; party boy Boris Johnson (enough said); Liz Truss (who lasted 49 days as PM); and Rishi Sunak, who after two years at the job, took the Conservatives into opposition just three months ago for the first time in 14 years.

Liz Truss, who holds the record for the shortest term as British PM: 49 days.Credit: Getty Images

Meanwhile, the latest candidates for the job are trying to out-muscle each other about who would be toughest in keeping unwanted immigrants out of Britain.

Smith’s point about the Victorian Liberal leadership being decided by a “handful of MPs” is, however, perfectly apt.

“Handful” is very nearly generous: the Liberals field just 19 MPs in the 88-member Legislative Assembly, plus 11 of the 40 in the Legislative Council. A telephone box comes to mind.

And yet, polls show the Liberals and their Nationals colleagues are what pundits call “competitive” with Labor, assuming an election were to be held now.

Most polls are running 50-50 on the two-party-preferred basis now that Daniel Andrews is gone and Jacinta Allan is running a government mired in debt and infrastructure projects running over budget, amid talk of turning suburbs into high-rise ghettos-in-the-making to achieve housing targets.

Of course, an election isn’t about to be held.

The next state election isn’t due for more than two years, which grants voters the wild freedom to tell pollsters whatever they wish without having to back it up with a vote.

Meanwhile, the public has been granted a wonderfully voyeuristic look into the doings of the allegedly competitive Liberal outfit.

John Pesutto and Moira Deeming. Credit: Darrian Traynor

You need only read my colleague Annika Smethurst’s splendid summation of the Moira Deeming-John Pesutto defamation trial to comprehend the crazed loathing that currently infects the so-called party.

“Kim was double-crossed by John,” Smethurst recorded. “John can’t stand Katherine. Louise wanted Moira gone, as did Matthew. Brad and Richard were in disbelief. And everyone’s angry with David.”

Does anyone really need Tim’s advice? Oh, to hell with it. Go hard, Tim. You can’t have too much fun at a time like this.

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