Unlike most of the mainstream media, and especially the ABC, the Guardian, Fairfax and the other motley groupings of left-wing rags and platforms, this magazine is keen for Angus Taylor to succeed. A decade of anti-conservative government has been a disaster for this country, and as more and more Australians are daily realising, time is running out.

The Turnbull coup was a tragedy for the Liberal party and put an end to any hope of fulfilling the Abbott promise of conservative reform. The Morrison/Frydenberg/Dutton/Ley experimentations were not much better, and merely served to open the way for the most inept, ideological and disingenuous Labor government in the nation’s history.

Angus Taylor was one of the bright conservative young Turks of the landslide-winning Abbott government in 2013. Like Mr Abbott himself, and indeed like former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, Mr Taylor came with the credentials of a Rhodes scholar, burnished with an impressive career in finance and agribusiness. He comes from a long line of New South Wales farmers and is genuinely as much at home in a pair of muddy boots and an Akubra sloshing around the paddocks of Goulburn as he is in the boardrooms of Sydney and Melbourne. So what’s not to like?

What’s not to like are some of the less-than-pure-conservative positions or policies Mr Taylor embraced or supported within the Coalition cabinets of those who replaced and succeeded Mr Abbott. But that is to miss the point. Almost every so-called conservative star of the original Abbott team was forced to shift leftwards under Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton, or face the career-ending consequences. So, too, within the Labor party does ambition frequently trump principle. That, of course, is politics, and is indeed a function of the Westminster system. That is not to say being a political pragmatist is to be applauded. Quite the contrary. That is what has led to the gutting of the Liberal party and many of its present woes.

Pauline Hanson is to be commended and applauded for her unwavering ability to stick to her guns no matter what flak is coming her way, but the reality is that that is the luxury of being the leader of a minority party. Mr Taylor, and indeed many of those within his new cabinet, now have a chance to prove themselves capable (or not) of rising above the factional politics and alliances that have seen the Liberal party drift ever leftwards, a reliance on focus groups and inner-city ‘strategists’ that has plagued the Liberal party for far too long. Mr Taylor won the leadership with a very respectable and convincing majority, 34 to 17, meaning now there are no excuses. Now we get, as the cover of this magazine suggests, 100 per cent Angus, with no bull. Now we shall see the mettle of the man.

During his first week, Mr Taylor has performed impressively. His key commitments, to restore Australians’ standard of living and to protect our way of life are admirable, and more importantly, doable. In essence, Mr Taylor clearly appears to pursue a traditional conservative agenda of building a strong economy, combined with a strong national defence and patriotic belief in this country. To the approval of most, and no doubt the fury of a tiny few, Mr Taylor chose six flags for his initial press conference – all of them the Australian flag. The era of virtue-signalling to anti-colonial ideologies is clearly over.

The choices he has made for his cabinet are largely commendable and encouraging, although there are some duds, as James Allan writes in his must-read cover story this week. Putting Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Sarah Henderson, Claire Chandler, Jonathon Duniam, Phillip Thompson, Melissa McIntosh and Andrew Hastie into the shadow cabinet along with James Paterson and Michaelia Cash suggests Mr Taylor (unlike his predecessors) understands the importance of surrounding yourself with good media performers. It was also the right thing to do to reinstate the Nationals who were the casualty of Sussan Ley’s inept and idiotic handling of Labor’s woeful hate speech laws.

But there are some danger signs, as well. A few too many ‘moderates’ appear to be in senior positions. Whether they will adapt to the new conservative sheriff in town is the key as to whether the Taylor experiment will succeed or fail. Already deputy leader Jane Hume appeared to fumble the immigration debate, as is her wont to do. She was not Mr Taylor’s choice – the party voted for her separately to voting for him – and how he manages and contains her will be critical to his success over the coming weeks and months.

This week’s magazine is in honour of Angus Taylor and the new conservative leadership of the Liberal party.

We trust you find it a nourishing and fulfilling read.