The May election generally was acknowledged to have been disastrous for the Coalition. But the disaster continues to unfold. On its current trajectory, it will extinguish itself as a party of government in the current term.

Not because of the genius of the government. Labor’s polling numbers are essentially unchanged since election day. The onrushing disaster is self-inflicted. There’s an angry, self-destructive impulse coursing through the Coalition itself.

Illustration by Simon Letch

It’s true that Labor successfully entrenched itself squarely in the centre of the electorate, taking seats from the left and the right to amass its commanding majority.

The rational response to this is obvious. Challenge the government for the centre ground. This is where governments are formed in a system of compulsory voting. And it’s what Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has been attempting. But much of her party is refusing.

And the chief victim is Ley herself. She took the job of leader with low public recognition. A vox pop by The Daily Telegraph, showing a photo of her to 100 random adults in central Sydney in July, found no one able to name her. But as voters began to discover her, they reacted positively.

“Sussan Ley started on a high of net likeability at positive 11 points, which made her the most likeable politician of the 20 or so we tested,” says Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic, pollster for this masthead. By this month, it had fallen to positive 1, about on par with Anthony Albanese.

“The relative change was even more stark on her performance rating,” says Reed. “It went from a pretty healthy positive 9 to negative 5, again on par with Albanese.” That’s a brutal fall of 14 points in a single month.

What happened in that month? Ley sacked Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from the shadow ministry for refusing to endorse her leadership, and Andrew Hastie resigned his frontbench seat when Ley ruled that he would not be involved in writing the party’s immigration policy.

A member of the Liberal leadership group remarks that “the loss of Jacinta and Andrew was especially damaging because they are rock stars with our branch members”. Both are members of the party’s conservative arm or, more specifically, the New Right faction, as explained in the........

© The Age