Simon Birmingham is at the top of the ‘moderates’ totem pole in the Liberal Party. He wears the Black Hand crown once worn by Christopher Pyne and in the last couple of days, Mr Birmingham has been out playing the ‘loyalty’ card.

You see, Liberal Party vice-president Teena McQueen made an aside to the crowd at CPAC – a crowd that was very angry with the Liberal Party’s abject despotism throughout the pandemic and its big spending, big taxing, big Wokeness. McQueen told the audience that they should ‘rejoice’ that ‘lefties’ in the party had lost their seats at the last federal election.

Well, as it happens, that’s exactly what I did after the last election. This is a political party that was so opposed to the free flow of ideas that it threw George Christensen out of the party. We conservatives in the party are all better off without the slate of Labor-lite MPs who lost at the last election. The Birmingham wing of the party doesn’t have to agree with me.

But here’s where things get galling.

Simon said, ‘Members of the federal executive are rightly expected to support our MPs and candidates – if they can’t do that then they have no justifiable place being on the federal executive.’ In other words, it all boils down to loyalty. The factions have to stay loyal.

My query regards how Mr Birmingham can say this with a straight face. I reckon that ability means he should move to Los Angeles and look for acting work. Two points in rebuttal Herr Birmingham. You were part of the plot that defenestrated Tony Abbott, if I recall correctly. Loyalty should be made of sterner stuff.

Oh, and despite several years of Malcolm Turnbull overtly trying to undermine the Liberal Party, I have yet to hear you utter one word against the former King of the Liberal Lefties.

It seems this is a one-way street, this demand of yours. Or put differently, you’re a hypocrite Simon. Either everyone plays the game in the ruthless, no-loyalty way in which you and Turnbull did – or everyone should be loyal, which means you owe us an apology for knifing Tony Abbott. Indeed, it was that act that has set the Liberal Party on its downhill spiral.

One set of rules for the Black Hand brigade. Another for everyone else. I’m with Teena on this one.