Nostalgia has taken hold of the conservative movement.

Familiar faces from the ‘glory’ days of the broad church have popped up in the news cycle, filling the absence of leadership left by the eternal listening of Sussan Ley.

Everyone knows the party needs a new leader.

The political machine is waiting out the holidays, biding its time, and watching to see if any of the hopeful candidates trip over and self-destruct before the race begins.

These discussions focus on the usual suspects: Hastie and Taylor, or the Senators Canavan, Antic, Price, and Cash.

You could say this is little more than speculative fantasy politics, but that’s the way of things in the 2020s. The former Deputy Prime Minister is a One Nation MP. The United Kingdom is staring down a 2029 Prime Minister Farage. The Mayor of New York is a Muslim socialist.

If we are to allow conservatives their political indulgence, who would they put in the leadership position?

There is an obvious candidate.

Many believe former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was robbed of his potential by a backstabbing ghost. He came to power promising the world and then fell off the map.

It’s interesting… Some of his most famous opening moves as Prime Minister would be shouted down as far-right by the modern Coalition, in particular, his decision to repeal the Carbon Tax. You can already hear the Sussan Leys of the world muttering something about needing to listen while sounding out the Teal seats.

Looking back over the battles which lost the war for Tony Abbott, they seem remarkably trivial.

What’s a Bronwyn Bishop helicopter ride over the collective entitlement bills of Anika Wells, Chris Bowen, Don Farrell, and Patrick Gorman?

Does it still matter that Abbott wasn’t keen on gay marriage when entire government departments cannot correctly define a woman?

And his call for Islam to experience a revolution in 2014 would be well-received post-Bondi.

‘We’ve got to work closely with live-and-let Muslims because there needs to be, as President [Abdel Fattah] Al-Sisi of Egypt has said, a religious revolution inside Islam. All of those things that Islam has never had – a Reformation, an Enlightenment, a well-developed concept of separation of church and state – that needs to happen. But we can’t do it; Muslims have got to do this for themselves. But we should work with those who are pushing in that direction. All cultures are not equal and, frankly, a culture that believes in decency and tolerates is much to be preferred to one which thinks you can kill in the name of God, and we’ve got to be prepared to say that.’

On second thought, Abbott would probably be nicked for either hate speech or Islamophobia.

Multiculturalism has become dogmatic and fragile, lashing out at criticism where even the questioning of the mass migration numbers has been called potentially racist by bureaucrats.

The downfall of Abbott was orchestrated by inciting the press with manufactured cultural outrage, quickly backed up by convenient opinion polls. Liberal MPs were manipulated into rolling their leader over what might happen at an election according to media outlets who enjoyed warming their hands on the smouldering ruins of the government. Take note Wets, no one is out here fantasising about resurrecting the careers of Morrison, Turnbull, or Bishop.

Abbott’s testing of the political waters has been whispered about for a while, especially with his book tour for Australia: a history. There has been an unusual amount of press coverage, including documentaries and a bewildering number of events.

Former Prime Ministers release books in their retirement all the time, but this felt like re-branding of Abbott as the keeper of Australian culture. The return of a statesman in an era of fraying patriotism.

The problem facing Abbott enthusiasts is his viability among the young.

It’s going to come as a nasty wake-up call to learn that the new generation of voters have no memory of good Australia. The real Australia. They cannot be nostalgic for something they never saw.

Not only are they indifferent to restoring the country, they have been brainwashed into thinking conservatives are evil. Not wrong, but cruel, greedy, and the cause of their problems.

(I could write an entire series on how this is a self-inflicted problem from decades of Coalition indifference to the education system.)

Worse, a worrying number of young people wanting to rebel find fringe ideology cool.

Older generations smoked, did drugs, and used too much eyeliner at concerts. These kids mock their elders with Nazi salutes and recite Nick Fuentes. The world wars are so far removed from their generation they have become an abstract in the way we might fetishise Ancient Egyptian gods or Viking raids.

They say Hitler is a bro with the same sincerity we used to accuse people of being grammar Nazis.

You don’t deradicalise them with a history lecture because they’re not ideologues like Islamic terrorists, they’re just bored of the State painting them as aggressors.

They were offered communism and racial supremacy via BLM and Indigenous grievance. Their reaction was to hop on board with National Socialism and racial pride. Completely predictable. They were created by Woke education policy and are no more crazy than young white feminists marching for Hamas or students who want to destroy the economy for a made-up climate doomsday.

The whole generation is a mine field.

The question becomes, how does the Liberal Party calm young voters down and reason with them?

How does conservatism re-integrate young men and save misguided women flirting with the intifada? What do we say to the eco-fascists who live in fear of breathing? How do you encourage productivity with people who think work is slavery and welfare is a human right?

Donald Trump won the young because he listened to the advice of Barron Trump. Instead of trying to censor, punish, and ban social media, he embraced the podcasters and conservative influencers who were making politics engaging. He packed stadiums and the internet swelled with fan-made memes. You can’t buy political coverage like that. MAGA was a machine and all Australian Liberals do is shriek and flee from the sight of a MAGA hat.

My advice to Abbott, if he were to read this column, is to stop rejecting social media as some kind of digital sewer.

Social media raised a generation. They love it more than they’ll ever love a politician and when you go to war with social media, you set yourself up as an enemy to the young.

And if that doesn’t move you, consider this: in the beginning people were illiterate. Those who could write controlled the future and recorded history to suit themselves. Then, slowly, the middle and working classes were given their liberty with the written word. They could communicate without the permission of their rulers.

Eventually, even the peasants could tell their stories.

Then something extraordinary happened, social media allowed the entire world of ordinary people to talk to each other in real-time beyond the control of dictators, prime ministers, and bureaucrats. It is the most extraordinary, beautiful, and intellectually difficult problem for our species. Ideas and regimes are no longer protected by borders. The first instinct of the politician is to protect themselves. Instead, they should seek to protect freedom, not just for their own people, but for the people of world who have been given this reprieve.

Politicians who obsess about safe speech have learned nothing of history or the Enlightenment. The West is silencing itself. Removing its voice from the global contest of ideas. Who wins when the West is silent? Which ideas rise unchallenged?

Social media is the new Enlightenment and the Liberal Party has been determined to suffocate it.

Setting that aside, since the Bondi terror attack, Abbott’s editorials have been elevated further in political circles. As one of the few with enough plot armour to say the quiet parts out loud, where he goes, editors, journalists, and TV hosts have been able to follow.

There is momentum behind his brand.

What do Speccie readers think? You can join the conversation on our Facebook along with hundreds of others.

So far, the comments are mixed. I believe one went something along the lines of, ‘that boat has been stopped’. Others say ‘yes’. And a surprising number think he should join Barnaby Joyce in One Nation.

The future is coming at conservatives. What it means to be a conservative has evolved. Young conservatives are rejecting this half-arsed attempt to be ‘moderate’. They know instinctively how true conservative principles should be applied to technology and the difficult reality of an Australia built by failed policy.

There is probably only one remaining election in which conservatives have a mathematical probability of winning.

Let’s hope the Liberals don’t waste any more time ‘listening’ to the soggy void of outdated focus groups. They must pick a leader. Soon.