The excuses tumbled over each other as our former prime minister, Tony Abbott, gave his analysis of the failures of conservative governments including, of course, his own. Saboteurs were out to get him, not least such forces as the “tyranny of officialdom”, as the headline on an Abbott blame-shedding article put it in Monday’s The Australian.

But democratically elected members of parliament also done him in, including fellow Liberals.

The pleading for political innocence and victimhood may amuse some who believe Abbott is deeply in debt to fellow Liberal Scott Morrison for relieving him of the title of worst Australian prime minister of the modern era.

From 2013 to 2015, many Australians carried the thought, “What’s Abbott going to do next?” It was a sense of apprehension about the actions of a PM who thought giving the late Prince Philip a knighthood would be a popular move, and who threatened to “shirt-front” Russian president Vladimir Putin – but didn’t.

Meanwhile, there was the running sideshow of Abbott-isms. Remember the “suppository of wisdom”? And it seemed – incorrectly – that he had dismissed a soldier’s death in Afghanistan with a crude “shit happens”.

Political misery sufferers can seek to join equally unhappy company to........

© The Guardian