Crikey

If the Liberals lose this election, who’ll take over? Some of the freaks, frauds and fanatics we’ve seen in NSW – the David Clarkes, the Alex Hawkes and Michael Towkes?

Mike Steketee takes a good look at the issue in The Australian today:

If the Liberals lose the election and John Howard marches into history, the party that he has helped shape for more than four decades will face huge challenges. Ironically, one of them will be to stop the Liberals becoming more conservative. With the party out of office everywhere and searching for direction, the risk will be that zealots turn it into a narrow group that appeals only to a minority.

Steketee cites Ian Hancock’s recently published history of the NSW Libs. Hancock records how the Uglies – the predecessors of the hard right faction that now dominates the NSW party – successfully expanded their influence in the 60s and 70s by taking over tiny branches in largely Labor parts of Sydney.

The branches had hardly any members. They were easy pickings. The Uglies could stack them out – then lambaste the Liberals in the leafy suburbs how they were the ones flying the flag on the frontline and take the moral high ground.

Rank and file Liberal membership has collapsed during the Howard years. “I think it’s more than halved everywhere,” a federal minister told me last year. “That only tells half the story,” they said. “The members are ancient.”

The Liberal Party branches, in other words, are ripe for the picking – as are a number of seats that have been regarded as blue ribbon.

Aston, the outer Melbourne suburban seat contested in a bitter by-election only six years ago is safer than Sir Robert Menzies inner eastern electorate of Kooyong. Or its neighbour, Peter Costello’s seat of Higgins.

Peter Brent wrote a sharp assessment of the situation at Mumble last month:

Lots of people reckon the “outer middle” will provide the bulk of the pro-Labor swing this year, but I don’t, because they’re conservative and (relatively) likely to stick with the devil they know. Instead, I suspect that Libs in leafy streets who have never voted Labor in their lives might be over-represented… This is why I reckon sitting member Malcolm Turnbull is more vulnerable than John Howard, and North Sydney will fall before Hughes. (Both of the last two unlikely.)

The doctors wives – or the well-off, well-educated and well-heeled residents of leafy Liberal seats – seem to have drifted to the ALP. Their electorates may follow. Just look at the SMH’s polling in North Sydney today. Very different types of Liberals could dominate the party, the parliamentary party and the rank and file.

They will be strapped for money and personnel – and nous and talent.

If he wanted to hang around after losing his seat, Malcolm Turnbull could draw on his role at the ARM, his time heading the Menzies Research Centre and as the party treasurer play an important role in helping the Liberals rebuild. He has resources, organisational ability and communications savvy.

There’s every chance, however, that he’ll be tempted by other opportunities.

Peter Costello, the heir apparent, doesn’t stand for anything. Another wannabe, Brendan Nelson, stands for even less. Tony Abbott has beliefs – but their wider appeal can be problematical. A return to Alexander Downer would be a joke.

The Liberals have stopped thinking during the Howard years. They’ve also stopped acting – other than dipping into taxpayers’ funds to pay for the Government Members Secretariat and its constant campaigning or their advertising campaigns.

If they end up in opposition, they may well forget that they’re supposed to do more than oppose. They may well just represent a rump who have forgotten that they’re supposed to also appeal to a broad cross section voters, not just their own kind.