Liberals need saviour but they shouldn’t resurrect Abbott

TONY Abbott, take the tip from a mate. Yes, Malcolm Turnbull’s Government is now falling apart before our eyes. But resist the temptation, Tony. Don’t even try to be prime minister again.

It won’t work. This rabble won’t thank you. And you don’t deserve the pain. Let the backstabbers hang.

I know, you’ll say that if asked, you cannot refuse. When duty calls, you must respond.

And duty isn’t just calling but screaming. The Liberal Party is being totally destroyed.

My God, do they need a man like you to take over – a leader who knows what the party must stand for and how to fight.

The “base” sure knows it. Former Labor leader Mark Latham saw that last weekend when he went to an Australian Christian Nation Association conference where you were the keynote speaker.

“The crowd went crazy, treating him like a political rock star,” Latham wrote. “I’ve never seen anything like it. With hundreds packed into the room, he received three standing ovations and a wild outpouring of love.”

Is there a single room in Australia where Turnbull would get a standing ovation?

See what’s happened instead to the Liberals after being led by a timorous man of Labor- lite convictions.

Look at the disastrous polls. Look now at Government MPs trembling at the shock of the Queensland state election, where One Nation won more than 20 per cent in the seats it contested, stripping the Coalition of votes and victory.

It’s over and some Coalition MPs are openly challenging Turnbull’s authority as leader.

Take Liberal senator Ian Macdonald, publicly accusing Turnbull of repeatedly siding with the Liberals’ enemies.

“Malcolm tries to pick the issues that everybody likes,” he said. “But he doesn’t seem to understand that 60 per cent of those or a lot of those people who he’s appealing to are people who are never going to vote for us.”

Exactly what you think, too, Tony, and why one Coalition MP tells me he’ll quit next week from the Government.

Meanwhile, Nationals MPs are also in revolt. At least four, two in the Lower House, plan to vote with Labor and the Greens for the inquiry into our banks that Turnbull has fought to stop.

Many Coalition MPs are also furious that Turnbull has dumped that promise he made just two months ago: “Religious freedom is fundamental and it will be protected in any ( same- sex marriage) Bill.”

In fact, six Coalition senators, all Turnbull backers, voted on Tuesday with Labor and the Greens to block protections for freedom of speech and religion.

Anger among conservative MPs is intense. Nationals MP Andrew Broad accused Turnbull of “a clear failure of leadership” in not even trying to hammer out a compromise.

The Liberals have been torn in two by a leader who has made conservatives feel like strangers in their own party.

But also Tony, it tells us you have no chance of saving them from defeat. The Liberals are a ruin and your public support low.

And would Turnbull, Pyne, loyal deputy Julie Bishop and their kind really let you rebuild without leaking, snarking, betraying and drilling holes in your boat?

Then there’s the countless journalists who’d work frantically to destroy you, to prove they were right to dismiss you as a crazed Rightwinger, loser and fool.

They’d be even worse than last time, when they claimed you were a homophobe, bigot and hater of women – even smeared you as a “Captain Catholic” who’d slept with your chief of staff. Add the Senate, still dominated by the Left, and populist crossbenchers whose power lies in saying no, particularly to reforms we most need. They’d love to destroy you a second time.

It’s not worth it, Tony. You’d lose. You wouldn’t save the Liberals – no one can.