It’s been a lonely week for the Nats. Personally, I am on Team Split. I think it’s high time they put the grunt back into the country party.

Yet, having taken the hard decision, David Littleproud – at time of publication – is now sitting astride the barbed wire fence, poised between Team Stay and Team Split. It’s the worst place to be.

He appears to be having second thoughts. It is true that outside the Coalition the Nationals will not get their bums on ministerial seats in a future government, but hear me out.

This is not the end of the Earth in a more fractured political environment. Notwithstanding Labor’s thumping win this month, you just need to look at data from rural voting booths to see more unpredictable patterns as more people challenge the Coalition status quo. The major parties’ primary votes are trending downwards.

Rural Australia holds the balance of power – if it wants to exercise it – in pretty much every parliament. Rural Australians are minority voters and at best 30% of the population. But it is a big enough bloc to wield with intent, if only we could muster our forces.

You don’t require night vision goggles to see the potential power of country Australia.

There is a whole bloc of rural and regional MPs sitting in the Nats party room, minus Perin Davey (on votes) and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price via defection to the Liberals.

Yet the new leadership team of the

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