PM lost the battle, then surrendered the war

MALCOLM Turnbull saved his worst for his last hours as Prime Minister. Having destroyed the Liberals, this vicious and selfish man is now plotting to destroy the successor who could save them.

Didn’t I warn you on day one that Turnbull was a narcissist whose one interest was to turn this Right-wing party into a mirror of his Left-wing self?

Now that his party has been trashed and challenger Peter Dutton is knocking on his door, Turnbull plans to burn the remains to the ground.

His press conference yesterday was astonishing.

An honourable man would have resigned to spare his shattered party further humiliation. After all, Turnbull was yesterday deserted even by two of the ministers who’d plotted to make him prime minister in 2015 – Mitch Fifield and James McGrath.

Finance minister Mathias Cormann, his greatest ally of the Right, had also just resigned, telling Turnbull he had lost the support of his party.

It was over. The enemy’s tanks were outside his bunker, yet Turnbull yesterday still kept throwing grenades – all at his own side.

Worse, he unleashed a campaign to ensure Dutton would never win the next election.

Turnbull’s agenda was clear. The Liberals must not survive as a party of the Right.

To do that, he had to buy time for his crony, Scott Morrison, the Treasurer, to muster as many votes for his own leadership bid to deny the more conservative Dutton.

He, meanwhile, had to paint Dutton as crazy, illegitimate, unpopular and a puppet of Rupert Murdoch. To do this, Turnbull yesterday called a press conference at which he sprung four disgraceful tricks – his final revenge.

First, he refused to immediately call a meeting of Liberal MPs to sort out the leadership, even though more than 25 had signed a petition demanding one, and several ministers had just resigned and called for it.

Turnbull made up a new rule: only if a majority of MPs (43) put their names to the petition would he call that meeting. And he issued a threat: “It’s important that people are accountable for what they’re doing.”

This was Turnbull stalling for time for Morrison to make all the calls, threats and promises overnight to get enough supporters to run against Dutton in a leadership contest.

This was Turnbull deliberately leaving the Liberals a poison pill. He knows that if Morrison wins a leadership ballot against Dutton, the civil war in the Liberals will not end. Morrison is trusted by few MPs and liked by fewer.

But if Dutton wins, the media Left will swing behind Morrison as the acknowledged rival and use him to attack Dutton, the conservative.

Turnbull’s second trick was nastier: to rush for legal advice from the Solicitor-General to cast doubt on Dutton’s legal right to even be in parliament.

For years, Turnbull has known Dutton has an interest in childcare centres that pass on government money to parents, but only now did Turnbull suggest Dutton’s right to sit in parliament be cleared up.

Turnbull’s third rotten trick: he vowed to quit parliament if Dutton replaced him, forcing a by-election in a seat the Liberals could lose and costing them their one-seat majority.

And Turnbull’s final trick was another poison pill to destroy a Dutton government.

He blamed his downfall not on his own blunders, his catastrophic global warming crusade or 23 months of terrible polls, but on Murdoch and evil conservatives like me who work for Murdoch.

“The reality is that a minority in the party room supported by others outside the parliament have sought to bully and intimidate others into making this change of leadership they’re seeking,” Turnbull cried. What a joke.

Turnbull clearly meant Dutton is the creation of the Murdoch papers, like this one.

Here is Turnbull’s real agenda. This self-obsessed man tried to turn the Right-wing Liberals into a party of the Left, like the Labor Party he once begged for a job.

He has failed, and now he is doing his damnedest to ensure the party is destroyed.