This is going to sound harsh, but the Liberals require tough love or the movement and their party will die.

Sussan Ley wants to modernise the Liberal Party while the right faction wants to salvage it from electoral oblivion.

These competing goals often involve public statements from MPs and Senators that invoke the names of Tony Abbott, John Howard and – particularly from the wets who imagine themselves as the inheritors of the Forgotten People – Robert Menzies.