Napoleon’s judicial murder of the Duke of Enghien was summed up by either his Chief of Police, Joseph Fouche or the cynical Diplomat Bishop Talleyrand (authorities differ) as ‘worse than a crime: it was a blunder’. Malcolm Turnbull’s and his followers’ political assassination of Tony Abbott deserves a similar epitaph.

He has lost his greatest, almost his only political asset: an image of Machiavellian cleverness. What makes the rout even more humiliating and inexcusable is that Shorten, too, campaigned unimpressively, and was handicapped by considerable historical baggage (which Turnbull did little or nothing to exploit).

Put another way, one thing worse than treachery is unsuccessful treachery. Sure, Turnbull ran a feeble and misdirected campaign, dealing in waffle reminiscent of Barack Obama’s ‘Hope and change’, and barely mentioning the union corruption which had been the cause of the double dissolution in the first place, but there was more to it than that.

Abbott made mistakes as Prime Minister, not least putting Turnbull in an ideal position to white-ant him. But it is now obvious that he could get one thing Turnbull could not get – votes. Abbott brought the Liberals back from opposition with a solid majority of seats which Turnbull has thrown away. All the self-justifying claims that the Liberals would have lost worse under Abbott can never be tested, but the fact remains that under Abbott they won the only poll that mattered.

The pundits may put forward many theories as to the cause of Turnbull’s and the Liberals’ humiliating rout. I believe the explanation is a very simple: the electorate does not like him, any more than it liked his republic.

It may well be, too, that Australians do not like treachery, backstabbing and betrayal in their elected leaders. The overthrow of Menzies in 1941 by an intra-Party coup after two years in office, not to mention the Rudd-Gillard circus, were cases in point. The ousting of John Gorton, though the Liberals clung to power for a little while under McMahon, was another example. In Britain the political assassination of Margaret Thatcher led to 10 years of Labour Government.

The indefensible decision to squander tax-payer’s money building obsolete submarines in South Australia did not even result in more South Australian liberal votes. It appears that politics has reached a state so noisome that voters cannot stomach it.

It has been shown in the past – ask the shades of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser – that one thing the electorate will not tolerate in politics when it comes to polling day is arrogance, and Turnbull was arrogance personified. He showed an astounding lack of political skills. His contempt for Abbott betrayed his contempt for the Coalition’s voters who had supported Abbott. Did he really expect conservatives to vote for a man who had made it obvious he despised them?

Turnbull did e-mail some prominent Libreral supporters, of course. In one particularly emetic missive he hailed his father’s value of ‘loyalty’, showing, it seemed, that some values are not hereditary. The trade treaties which were one of the few things in its record the Turnbull Government could boast about were negotiated by Abbott.

He might have given Abbott a senior Ministry – say Defence. Defence will be important in a turbulent and threatening international environment. It would have been more than a gracious and generous gesture and a good use of Abbott’s very considerable talents (as well as wisely keeping him in the tent). It would have done more than bind up some of the deep wounds Turnbull has wantonly inflicted on the Liberal Party in the quest for personal gratification: it would have been a signal that the Liberal Party remains a broad church, much of whose base and many of whose intellectuals are conservative, and that Turnbull was prepared to go some way to conciliate them. Instead he made it clear that he had no interest in carrying on Howard’s and Menzies’ successful strategy of seeing the Liberal Party as the custodian of both Australia’s conservative and Liberal traditions. He evidently expected the Liberal bird to fly with its conservative wing amputated.

The budget, apart from a company tax cut, offered only the hopee-changee mantra ‘Jobs and Growth’ and talk of (shades of Stalin!) a ‘five-year plan’.

The cultural left is running wild. The Arts Council is an independent body, in theory free from political interference, but somehow I still doubt it would have cut off the literary grant to Quadrant if Howard or Abbott had still been PM.

There were, of course, other things: His halal dinner for the Shady sheik who wants women to be hung up by their breasts in Hell, and not to look at men while of Earth (that he didn’t know about the sheik’s ideas before inviting him to dine at the PM’s residence is arguably more damning than if he had known), as well as his compulsive chant after various terrorist atrocities that Islam is a Religion of Peace, as if we had not heard this enlightening sentiment before.

For sheer gracelessness, coupled with what in the circumstances looked like cognitive dissonance, Turnbull’s post-election speech was only exceeded by his claim after the defeat of the Republic Referendum which he championed that John Howard would be remembered only for breaking Australia’s heart (Never mind that the referendum, too, was the result of a vote).

What now? Some wags have made the point that Turnbull will be unable to fall on his sword because it is firmly lodged in Abbott’s back. But how can Turnbull now claim to lead, or have the confidence of, the country or his own party? It is a matter of defeat without any of the nobility that sometimes accompanies defeat.

2GB’s Alan Jones has a point that Turnbull should be kept on because Australia can ill afford yet another change of Prime Minister. But I believe, with due respect to Alan, that the present situation has gone too far for that.

Turnbull must go.

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