Life after Turnbull for PM and his party

Scott Morrison’s electoral salvage operation is starting to produce results.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison’s electoral salvage operation is starting to produce ­results.

Leadership changes normally deliver a bounce for the party that indulges them. That is the point of them.

Morrison’s ascendancy, however, led to the Liberal Party’s primary vote falling off a cliff.

The political wreckage left by the change, like the Titanic, appeared at first to be beyond recovery. But that was seven weeks ago. The public view of political longevity these days would suggest that, too, is now a narrative of ­history.

There are strong signs that the Liberal Party has already moved on from Malcolm Turnbull, despite his supporters’ best efforts to prevent this.

While still at the depths of catastrophic defeat, the Coalition’s primary vote has rebounded significantly since August 24 and is now back at where it was not too long ago under Turnbull’s headship. The two-party-preferred vote of 53-47 takes the party back to last December.

Turnbull would argue that his last poll of 51-49 (Labor in front) shows what an act of idiocy the leadership spill was.

However, his opponents contend that Turnbull was incapable of taking it to the next step. To ­actually win another election, the disaffected Liberal Party base needed to be reunited.

The latest Newspoll suggests Morrison may be capable of this task. Coalition voters now unequivocally believe Morrison is a more compelling bet against Bill Shorten than Turnbull ever was.

This was the view across a range of key measures including the economy, cost of living and delivering tax cuts — ipso facto, Turnbull was more favoured among Labor voters.

The view among conservatives is that this was the very point as to why he would ultimately fail as a Liberal leader.

The past three Newspolls, including this one, challenge a long-held myth about Turnbull’s popularity. Pretty much since the last election, Turnbull’s approval ratings had been in negative territory. That is, more people thought less of his leadership than those that thought more of it. He was popular only when compared with Shorten, who was in deeper negative territory and deeply unpopular.

Morrison is in net positive territory. He is more popular than both Turnbull and Shorten — as in more people like him than those who don’t.

As much as leadership popularity appears to be divorced from voting intention, Labor is alive to the threat of Morrison.

Shorten in the past two weeks has spent $20 billion in policy announcements trying to blunt Morrison’s momentum, to little effect. While it has afforded him an improvement in his personal approval ratings, Labor’s primary vote continues to recede.

Where the electoral contest is now will be revealed in the coming weeks.

If Shorten can contain the ­Coalition at 53-47, he will have done well. All of this may become purely academic if the Liberal Party loses Wentworth next weekend. Minority government never ends well for those forced into it.