BUNGLES BENCH DYNAMIC DUO

WELL, this is embarrassing. The crippled Turnbull Government is fighting for its life but has now benched its best two election campaigners.

Last year, as Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce saved the government from election defeat by winning an extra seat while the Liberals, led by Malcolm Turnbull, lost 14. But Joyce — blasted out over his affair with a staffer — now joins Tony Abbott on the backbench.

Remember Abbott? As Liberal leader in 2013 he led the Coalition to a huge election win, picking up 25 seats. Two years later, Turnbull knifed him.

Worse for the government, Joyce and Abbott — who know how to destroy Labor — are more likely to destroy the Coalition after Turnbull treated them like dirt.

This highlights the fatal weakness of this government: its total lack of political skills. That starts at the top with the man central to the fall of both Abbott and Joyce.

Take Joyce. Yes, I said he had to resign as Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, less for leaving his wife than for finding his lover, his media adviser, two taxpayer-funded jobs.

But Joyce could have been saved had the government’s media strategy not again turned an embarrassment into a nuclear disaster with no survivors.

Both Turnbull and Joyce hid what they should have revealed. Turnbull then pretended he hadn’t known last year of the affair, and a week ago publicly shamed Joyce without warning, calling his conduct “shocking”.

Joyce in turn called him “inept” and refused to quit. When the two met to talk peace, it was leaked that Turnbull had promised not to criticise Joyce’s behaviour again.

But Joyce went too far, giving an interview with his girlfriend from his free apartment that just kicked the story along.

With Turnbull desperate for Joyce to go, there came a series of anti-Joyce leaks from deep inside the government to shame him out. Two involved revealing what Joyce had said during confidential Cabinet discussions. In the end, Joyce quit without telling Turnbull first.

This spectacular mismanagement will cost the government, and not just in the polls. A furious Joyce could easily pay Turnbull back.

True, Joyce is the prime author of his downfall, but the Coalition now counts the cost: it has two street-fighting leaders dumped and feeling betrayed by an inept PM better at destroying his own than destroying Labor.