It is a common mistake in analysing leadership challenges to search for a deeper logic - some cunning plan that when fully executed, will facilitate a magical turn-around.

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Experience teaches us that, more often than not, there is scant rigour behind most power-plays. Plenty of ambition and laudatory talk of change, but a well-calibrated blueprint of actions and results? Rarely.

Bob Hawke's last-minute raid on Bill Hayden's work-a-day leadership in 1983 might be an exception. There were solid empirical data to argue that the charismatic Hawke could turn an uncertain contest against Malcolm Fraser into a sure thing.

Having rolled Hayden on the day the election was called, Hawke relied heavily on Hayden's diligent work on policy development and positioning.

His plan was simple and effective, however harsh it was on Hayden who famously observed, "I am not convinced that the Labor Party would not win under my leadership. I think that a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory".

Hayden's injury was real but there was no gainsaying the result. He became that rare thing in politics, a leader probably on track to success, who was nonetheless replaced at a minute to midnight.

More typically, these leadership convulsions originate in the miasmic despair of poor polling when any switch at all starts looking attractive. The name Mark Latham springs to mind here. There are others.

Foolish options can look sensible when the risk profile inverts so that doing nothing feels riskier than rolling the dice. Or, perish the thought, unifying behind the incumbent.

When Kevin Rudd and his supporters plotted their revenge on Julia Gillard through 2012-13, there was a sense that rehiring Rudd was both an act of contrition, and a solution to a looming wipe-out.

Implicit also, was a naive hope that Rudd MKII would be qualitatively different, not just from Gillard but from Rudd himself.

Labor MPs speculated that Rudd had learned from the sleepless freneticism of his first stint and had used his time on the backbench to map out a grand strategy. Labor was in a hole and "Kevin" offered not just redemption but renewal.

It turned out that there was not much more to it than getting rid of Gillard - who they helped to undermine. Voters saw through it. Tony Abbott stormed to victory with 90 seats.

Malcolm Turnbull's infamous 30 disastrous Newspolls rationale for his challenge against Abbott two years later gave the impression of a deeper change, albeit expressed in terms to which Liberals would relate, their imminent first term defeat.

Later, when it emerged that Turnbull's stances on marriage equality, climate change and republicanism had been deep-sixed in the deal to secure conservative support, hopes of a fuller repudiation of Abbottism evaporated.

Commentators asked: "What is the point of the Turnbull government?" Voters wondered, too, as polls turned south.

The joke went that this was basically the Abbott government with longer sentences and more expensive tailoring.

So, then, what is the driving force behind the promotion of Angus Taylor?

If I had to put it in one word, I'd nominate "panic". If given two, "blind panic". A primary vote share of 15 per cent will do that.

Taylor's message to Liberals was that there were two options, "change or die", and he offered them the former.

Who wouldn't opt for change given only those choices? But was he the answer to such a grave question?

Taylor is hardly change. He was shadow treasurer when the Liberals wantonly surrendered their trump card at the 2025 election by proposing to spend more while repealing Labor's lower-income tax cuts. It was a call central to the Coalition's failure.

Sussan Ley, on the other hand, had already haralded major change. Now though, a stubbornly male-dominated Liberal Party which had never respected her authority, was tearing her down.

That she would be their first ever woman and one of just six still sitting in the House of Representatives, had been sufficiently persuasive in the weeks after their worst ever loss in 2025.

Back then, the brutal electoral lesson of disregarding a whole half of the electorate had penetrated even the Liberals' carapace of blue-blazered certitude.

How could it not do? Even leaving the Teals aside, Labor's female MPs alone, can defeat the entire Coalition in any House of Reps division.

How was this Liberal representation a reflection of modern Australia?

Now though, it doesn't seem to matter.

In dumping Ley, metropolitan Liberals have vindicated the Nationals for two Coalition walk-outs since the election - stunts born of disrespect for her leadership and calculated to weaken it further.

What message does this send to women and younger voters?

History will probably judge Ley's leadership harshly. Like Turnbull, she succumbed to the hope that accommodating the hard right would buy her time.

The chaps were never going to give her that. She should have fought.

Now they've got what they wanted. A bloke in charge and a sharp turn to the right on immigration despite their major electoral losses all having come from their left flank.

Plus, they now face a horrendous by-election in which their six female MPs look like going down to five.

As the new leader might say: "Well done, Angus".

Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.

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