Liberal recipe for chaos

Having just had the building Howard locked them in burn down around them, the remaining Liberals now have to regroup into something resembling an alternative government. At present, the temptation appears great that they will resemble Iraq after the fall of Saddam. Devoid of their strongman, tribal tensions and personality clashes will rent a suitably mindless civil war upon the landscape.

The problem the Liberals would always have was what would happen when they lost control of the agenda. Howard prospered by constructing his own virtual reality where ideology reigned supreme. Once Rudd became leader, Howard lost control permanently. The election merely made this official. His wise heads, Costello, Downer and Ruddock are so repugnant to the public and vulnerable to attack that none wanted the thankless job of heading Howard's faction.

During Howard's tenure there was a large majority backing him and a smaller group backing Costello. At various times, Abbott and Nelson rose briefly before proving unelectable. Late in the term, Turnbull arose to challenge Costello as successor-in-waiting. When Howard lost, a vaccuum arose which Abbott attempted to fill. Unfortunately for Tony, his not so good friend Bernie Banton had died and so his first official duty was likely to be attending the state funeral of a man he had accused of 'not necessarily being pure of heart' a few weeks earlier. Hence Nelson was drafted from the deputy candidate ranks to fill the Howard void.

Costello mused on his career prospects and then reinvented himself as party whip. Costello's former faction fell in behind Turnbull, who also picked up some of the more pugnacious realists in the party who considered him to be some kind of Australian Schwarzenegger capable of taking his green Wentworth appeal national. However Howard's faction could not swallow Malcolm's prescription and preferred Nelson's apologia to genuine contrition.

Complicating matters is the Thatcherite kindergarten teacher from Perth, Julie Bishop. Bishop seems to be labouring under the illusion that she has been elected leader of the autonomous state of Western Australia, primarily on a platform typified by workchoices. In her kingmaker capacity, she has the potential to create a mighty headache for her eastern leaders for whom workchoices is electoral poison. Methinks she rather fancies a celebrity death match with Julia Gillard and will stay in the deputy position until Gillard takes over. This raises the prospect of Abbott and Costello returning to create further mischief as bearers of the workchoices mantle. Costello's stocks may rise if the economy performs badly over the term and economic management comes back into vogue. Abbott has proven to be accident-prone, nasty and out of touch and is totally unelectable.

Given Turnbull lost by three votes, he is unlikely to give up the fight when so many observers consider him the best chance of unseating Rudd, not least the Australian newspaper, former loyal supporter of Howard's regime.