Just over a year ago, John Ruddick wrote of his quixotic campaign to reform the NSW Liberal Party. Last month Michael Baume, also in these pages, saddled up as Ruddick’s Sancho Panza to battle the evil knights of the NSW Branch.

Ruddick is still battling the windmills – the clever factional leaders who arise inevitably and, in Burkean terms, necessarily, in political processes.