This week has proved the National Party leadership is a poisoned chalice, even when someone hasn’t been leader for years.

Within days of each other, John Howard’s two surviving deputy PMs, John Anderson and Mark Vaile, have been ‘cancelled’ by people not fit to lick their RMs.

As covered earlier this week, Anderson was cancelled by the preselectors of his own party when, last Friday, he was passed over for Senate preselection by some party hack whose name no one remembers, but who was a former president of the Young Liberals — which apparently trumps being a mere former Deputy Prime Minister.