It’s all hands on deck to save the Liberal Party (not necessarily the Coalition). The return of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been whispered about behind the scenes. Will he run for a seat… Will he go into media… Will he apply for party president…

Most of us knew which way this situation was leaning. Federal party president. The decision became official last Friday.

Chris Bowen’s remarks on the news – that ‘Tony Abbott was a disastrous Prime Minister’ and ‘completely out of touch with the views of mainstream Australia’ – is laughable commentary from a Climate Change Minister whose existential apocalypse has recently been dismissed.

With Labor licking their wounds from the Budget fallout, Mr Bowen continued on a slightly deranged line of thought about the ‘right-wing extreme vortex’ Abbott will oversee. It’s hard to tell what makes up this radical political ideology. Low taxes? Free speech? Small government? A crackdown on NDIS rorting? And end to offensive race grifting? Cheap, reliable energy? Business enterprise?

If Abbott’s prime ministership was a shambles, it wasn’t on account of philosophical disagreements with the electorate but rather the factional war inside the party. The Liberals are an old party and political age creates tribal groups of self-interest seeking power. Abbott arrived at the end of a simmering moderate caliphate and it consumed his leadership before he had a chance to lead on the policies that brought him to Canberra.

Those who won against Abbott oversaw the final demise of the party.

It finished with the collapse of the Sussan Ley leadership. This cemented the factional decline of the moderates and even those who cringe at blue ribbon nostalgia were forced to admit that something had to change.

That’s not to say the moderates are gone.

Certainly not.

You can see them peering down on Angus Taylor – hoping, no doubt – that if they allow the favourite conservative candidate to rise and fall before the next federal election, that will be the end of them. Taylor and Canavan wiped out in one go…

This is far from idle speculation. At least one recent bit of modelling showed Taylor likely to lose his seat to a theoretical One Nation candidate.

In some way, the rise of One Nation and the dismal Coalition polls support the moderate argument. If you’re an idiot. Had Angus Taylor led instead of Dutton, and definitely instead of Ley, One Nation may never have been able to fit through the cracks. Taylor is simply a reasonable candidate running far too late. If the Liberals think they can switch a moderate in after Taylor, clean-up the Teal seats, and win back businesses, they don’t deserve to be a major party.

For now, the surviving Liberals have brought a third conservative name into the tent: Tony Abbott.

The political waters effectively parted to clear his path to victory, with his main rival, Alexander Downer, withdrawing to a co-vice president role.

Upon election to the role, Abbott said, ‘I regard it as my duty to serve the party in this time of existential crisis. I have to say that as the last successful federal Leader of the Opposition, I do believe that I have the ability to help Angus Taylor to be the next successful federal Leader of the Opposition and to become our 32nd Prime Minister.’

Strategically, it’s a mixed bag.

Abbott carries with him the last of the Menzies grandeur and voters aged 45+ remember him with at least some fondness. But young voters mostly do not know who Tony Abbott is, and One Nation is busy educating them about the role Abbott played in Pauline Hanson’s stint in jail. Abbott will have to earn his stripes on policy and strategic merit, not nostalgia. The question that everyone keeps asking is, does he understand young and poor Australians? He has been embedded in the circle of privilege for a long time. Motherhood statements do not work on young Australians. They don’t. These workers do not care about the rose-tinted speeches of aspiration while the streets pressing against their shoulders remain hostile to success.

Another former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, called Abbott ‘clearly a masochist’ for stepping into the mess formerly known as the Menzies’ Dream. ‘But anyway, he’s got a strong commitment to politics, so good on him.’

It has been entertaining to watch Turnbull cling onto the ‘moderate’ thesis with the same devotion as Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to random surfaces.

‘They’re basically arguing that the Liberal Party’s mistake has been not being right-wing enough. They’ve been saying this, despite every election sending them the message that a significant part of the electorate feel they have gone too far to the right.’

Some? Maybe. Significant? Debatable. Majority? Certainly not.

‘It’s clear that the Australian public, the sensible public, wants rational policies. They don’t want culture wars.’

Really? I’m starting to form the opinion that politicians don’t want culture wars because it leads to criticism of their policies. The people seem to be spoiling for a culture war to save their nation.

Regardless, the rise of One Nation is the real-world proof that Turnbull’s assumptions about conservative voters are likely wrong. This debate will be settled over the next few election cycles.

‘I thank you, Angus, for this opportunity to serve, because believe me, while Australia remains the best country on Earth, we are drifting backwards. Our economy is stagnating, our society is fragmenting, our security is in peril, and underneath it all, this is a kind of spiritual malaise,’ said Abbott.

That’s all well and good, but are these empty platitudes, or does Abbott have the courage to name the reason why this is the case? Plenty of Liberal ministers have fronted the National Press Club in recent months and dodged the detail in favour of aspiration. And the people hate it. Trust comes from honesty and honesty will cost the Liberals Teal seats and the moderates will cry. Although it’s probably for the best.

In taking this role, Tony Abbott will step down from an advisory role with Advance. Readers will recognise Advance as a conservative advocacy group that runs policy campaigns and occasionally hosts conferences.

This whole chess move distills to the disagreement within the broad church of the Liberal Party.

There is the Turnbull position – that the Liberal Party has already been dragged too far to the right and Abbott will only make them more extreme. An extreme right-wing, apparently, which has not been defined.

Or the Abbott position – that the Liberal Party is currently a carbon-copy of Labor sitting somewhere on the centre-Left which has opened the path for One Nation to absorb the bulk of conservative voters.

Both these positions cannot be true, and voters will tell the Liberal Party where the boundaries of conservatism truly sit. The mythical centre will not be defined by the party moderates, it will be set in place halfway between the victorious conservative movement and Labor.

Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.