Phew! We were all waiting for the Liberal Party to call a spill and remove its leader. Surely it was only a matter of time before the party room pulled the plug on a leader languishing galaxies behind in the polls. Just throw a dart at the directory of Liberal MPs and wherever it hits is bound to be an improvement. Well, 90 per cent likely to be. Okay, 75 per cent likely, with my fingers crossed behind my back.

Well, there I was thinking those sort of thoughts and wouldn’t you know it? Instead of the Federal Liberal party removing Sussan Ley in favour of fill-in-the-blank anyone whose name doesn’t rhyme with ‘Gag’ (and then installing a leader who actually believed in ditching Net Zero and so could sound authentic in making the case to bring sanity back to energy policy, and heck maybe believed in massive cuts to immigration too), what do we get? I find out it wasn’t the national Liberal Party that knifed its leader. You know, the national party languishing at an all-time low first preference tally in the polls. The one polling so badly that One Nation’s support isn’t just historically its best, it’s also now within spitting distance of the Liberal Party’s support. But no, no, no. It’s not that branch of the Liberal Party. Nope. Not them. They’re waiting. ‘Wouldn’t look good, old boy, to remove our first ever female leader.’ ‘We need to wait. Give her a chance. Shouldn’t hurry these things.’

Leave aside the total and blatant dysfunction in the federal party room, and the many-too-many Labor Lite MPs, and ponder those sort of sentiments. Did you notice the complete and utter capitulation to identity politics and group thinking and illiberalism that lies behind claims that are premised on ‘we have to treat women differently and give her more time than a man’? How can anyone expect MPs with those sort of DEI views to fight for merit and all the other culture war issues that need prosecuting when three-quarters of them don’t believe it themselves?

And that brings me back to the Opposition Liberal party room that did just defenestrate its leader. Where was that? It was in Victoria where the Liberal Party had just snuck ahead and was leading in the most recent poll (and was near on tied in others). Have you ever before heard of a party room that ditched a leader that had the Opposition tracking up and up and in a winning position in the polls? I mean, even Malcolm Turnbull, the guru of Machiavellian backroom skullduggery (aided, I know, by ScoMo ‘I haven’t got a single, solitary legacy for my time as Prime Minister’), even Turnbull didn’t knife his leader when he was ahead.

The excuses trotted out were pathetic. Senator Paterson on Sky TV said something along the lines of ‘well, the party room knows best who should be the leader’. Are you f***** kidding me? It was the party room that ditched Abbott for Turnbull in one of the most self-destructive calls in this country’s political history, a call whose consequences are still blighting all right-of-centre voters today. It was the party room that showed a median IQ of 75 and put in Sussan Ley over Angus Taylor. It was the party room that installed John Pesutto and for eons stood by him over Moira Deeming. When was the last time a Liberal Party party room picked a half-decent leader? Take your time – you know, the way the Federal Liberal party room is taking its time. I’ll be candid and forthright. A few decades ago, leaving it to the party room to pick the leader, in keeping with longstanding tradition, made sense. But since the ranks of MPs have become infested with careerist, principle-free cuckoos it makes no sense at all. That’s why the Conservative Parties in Britain and Canada have taken the last word on who will be leader away from MPs, though the halfway house approach in the UK is too easy for the MPs to game. Canada has it right, which is why Pierre Poilievre got a 40-year high best election result for the Tories earlier this year; still didn’t win; but has not been knifed. Because the paid-up party members love him. It’s the time-serving MPs who do not. He’d be gone in Australia’s Liberal party because the ‘moderates’ can’t wait to knife anyone to the right of Bill Shorten.

But look at whom the Victorian Liberal MPs opted to put into the job, one Jess Wilson. Of course, it was what the lefties in the party room would call a ‘moderate’. Of course, she is a she (though half of the party room would not be able to say on what basis she’s a she). Oh, and it will surprise no one that in this nest of complete, unprincipled incompetence, she was the only Victorian Liberal MP publicly to support the Voice. And did I mention that personally she was an active supporter of the Aboriginal Treaty? Did you know that she backed John Pesutto against Moira Deeming? The rest writes itself. Yes, she is a careerist politician type, having been a staffer (including for the most profligate, high spending Liberal Treasurer of all time, Josh Frydenberg). Yes, she was a former lobbyist. Yes, she’s been in the state Parliament for the blink of an eye.

So, to sum up: She’s on the left of the party room. She sided with Pesutto over Deeming. She is a career-type politico. She was pro-Voice and pro-Treaty. She is a climate change renewables cheerleader. In terms of foundational political instincts, I doubt that I share a single one with the new Victorian Liberal leader. Now that said she’s clearly smart. But then Malcolm Turnbull was clearly smart. So? I spend my life working with very smart people in universities whose views are woeful – remember William Buckley’s line that he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard? That is my view emphatically. Of course, Ms Wilson has come out making all the right noises about abrogating or nullifying or repealing (who knows what the correct term is when a subnational government makes up the ability to enter into a treaty with some of its own citizens?) the Treaty. She says she respects the Victorian voters’ rejection of the Voice. But then she has to say that doesn’t she? She promises still to focus on crime but wants to focus more on the economy. But she’ll be a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian. We know that. She’ll just be one that is sane, unlike Victoria’s Labor Party.

So, can she win? Maybe. The Victorian Libs are running against just about the worst governing party in the democratic world since 2020. That means she and the Libs could not fail to be better in office than Team Andrews and Allan. Not exactly high praise. Of course, it’s incredible that the Victorian Libs aren’t, and haven’t been, 20 points up in the polls, a failing only explicable because they have positioned themselves as clones of, and indistinguishable from, Labor. (Ditto the WA Libs. Ditto the NSW Libs. Ditto the SA Libs. But I repeat myself.) At any rate, Jess Wilson and the Libs could win given whom they’re facing. But no conservative voter should ignore the new leader’s instincts on culture issues and on energy issues and on anything to do with identity politics. They are diabolical. And in the crunch, instincts matter. (If there’d been a Liberal MP with actual instincts in favour of freedom and civil liberties then he or she would have quit Cabinet during Covid. Talk is cheap. In the crunch, principles and instincts are what matter.) But Ms Wilson is pretty good at being interviewed on TV. She will definitely be the acceptable face of the Liberal Party as far as ‘our’ biased national broadcaster the ABC is concerned.

The way I’ll finish is to have you look up at my title to this piece. It seems that Jess Wilson is the ideal leader for many, if not most, of today’s Liberal Party MPs. Think about that and weep. And watch the One Nation polling results go further up.