It was presumed, from the eternal silence of the party room, that someone talked Angus Taylor off his horse while Sussan Ley was whisked away to a safe space.

This is how Moderates handle a crisis.

Coddle the challenger. Make promises to the frontbench. Demoralise other leadership hopefuls with tales of woe about their numbers. Then wait it out.

This plan is easy to execute while ever mainstream conservative media remains interested in the survival of unworthy Liberal leaders. Their headlines are swiftly distracted, especially when it comes to a suspiciously simultaneous instinct to stab at the feet of One Nation. Sometimes it feels as though there is only one media organism, hostile to the public voice…

Perhaps I am wrong, and Taylor is brewing rather than stalled.

There was talk on Friday afternoon suggesting the unusual quietness from Angus Taylor was not indecision or the mysterious celestial movements of powerbrokers, but rather the party giving ‘clear air’ to advertise Labor’s economic failure.

Jim Chalmers was busy wounding Labor’s popularity with inflation and possible new taxes to pay for all that luxury government spending.

Someone should explain to Conservative HQ that comfy quietness is not as effective as a foghorn, or even a vuvuzela. If the aim was to damage Jim Chalmers, they could have tried standing behind him and giving him a good old shove into the blackhole beneath Canberra. Instead, his injuries came from the wrath of social media, not the tepid discontent of the Ley Empire.

Even the Reserve Bank of Australia managed to land a blow, albeit with a feather duster rather than the back of a wooden spoon, by admitting that Jim Chalmers must shoulder some of the blame for inflation thanks to his addiction to spending other people’s money.

Where is the saviour, then? Is Angus Taylor coming, or not?

If he is, he better hurry.

Sussan Ley’s passive-aggressive (with emphasis on the aggressive) unveiling of a Liberal-only frontbench did more damage to the future of the Liberal Party than the Nationals, with the Moderates declaring, by way of symbolism, that they don’t care a jot about regional areas. This is not a good plan when regional-based One Nation is breathing down your neck.

What looks like ‘strength’ to Ley could be flipped into a weapon against her in a leadership vote.

The Australian wrote about a ‘powerful council of Coalition elders’ (mentioning John Anderson, John Howard, and Tony Abbott) being ‘deployed’ to grease the talks between Sussan Ley and David Littleproud. Their re-unification is secondary to what the voters think of this mess, and at least one, perhaps two of those Coalition elders have weakened their influence by making snipes at One Nation.

Their presence also speaks to a party held together by faceless factions, the fingerprints of past leaders, and the ghost of Menzies. These pigments paint a picture of modern weakness.

As for Taylor, all we get are hints. The latest of these came in the form of a 2GB interview, in which Taylor said:

‘I’m not going to say to you and your listeners that I don’t have and haven’t had leadership ambitions. I clearly have had … that’s why I ran for the leadership last time around. Ambition is a good thing. But most of all, what we all want is a better Liberal Party and a better Coalition. And we need that fast. And if we don’t deliver that, Australians will continue to look elsewhere.’

At least he’s talking about ‘ambition’ instead of ‘listening’.

His ambition might have to tread water, with rumours that supporters would prefer him to wait until March to ‘build support’. Support to lead what, exactly? By March there might not be much of a party left to lead. Word on the street is that One Nation is after more than just former conservatives, they want to emulate Reform and flip sitting MPs and Senators. Ley has certainly made enemies by dishing out punishments for lapsed loyalty. How many languishing on the backbench might consider Ms Hanson’s offer?

A senior conservative, anonymous of course, said, ‘Not one person has come to me and said they are convinced that Angus has the numbers. People are all over the place.’

May we suggest that this anonymous source take the advice of another anonymous source, ‘What are we waiting for? When do people think it is going to get better?’

Voters are terribly bored by inter-party politics. They care about broad outcomes. Will Angus Taylor change Liberal policy? If he doesn’t do it within his first week, he’ll have failed.

And if Sussan Ley remains leader, the Liberal Party will continue to offer the same damp politics which has facilitated the structural rot within the Coalition.

Haste in this matter is essential for survival, and yet they cannot sense the danger.

Something for the Liberals to remember:

Political parties die. Even old ones.

Once a century, there is a tendency to behave as hermit crabs and shuffle the central philosophy of a party into a new shell so that it can continue to grow. Menzies did this himself to create the Liberals. It is curious that a party which references its founder with such frequency does not understand the situation which led to his fame.

For a start, Menzies did not listen, he talked. His radio broadcasts, of which The Forgotten People morphed into conservative legend, created the fabric of a political era.

Menzies sought his new party to be free of the financial chains clasped around the United Party of Australia by Big Business. Today, the Liberal Party polishes these chains, whether it be the developers or the green barons who ghostwrite climate change policy. Their religious pursuit of the Teal seats is a side effect of this financial imprisonment which their elected members desire to maintain. Today’s Liberal Party is utterly terrified of becoming a party of the people where membership, rather than financial power, becomes the overriding power.

The man himself was not a spiritual figure during his life, but rather an often despised and rejected man which the conservative movement perceived as a threat to the old party’s survival. His endurance in political lore is of his own making and because of the inter-party war he resolved through civil conflict and conquest. He is the victor who wrote Liberal Party history. A person who today’s moderates would despise were they to meet face-to-face.

Most importantly, he thought conservatism had lost its way. That the party was caught up in itself, in attaining power, in managing its external deals, and that it had entirely forgotten the reason for its existence.

Menzies rallied the people Pauline Hanson now speaks to. He did so via the radio, One Nation reaches out on social media. Instead of joining the conversation, the Liberals have shown an insatiable desire to regulate and suffocate the very digital medium being used to connect with conservatives.

The task before the Liberal Party next week is not to select a new leader; it is to choose a future.

Is Angus Taylor to be the last king of a dying dynasty, or the reformation of a new era?