BEN HARVEY: Angus Taylor’s Liberal leadership bid is proof Australia really is in trouble

The age of Angus could be upon us.

After cock-teasing his party for a fortnight, right-wing heavyweight Angus Taylor has put his hat in the ring to lead the blue side.

“The Labor Party has failed and the Liberal Party has lost its way,” he argued on X.

You don’t have to go too far back in time to discover that the Libs have road-tested an ultra-conservative, white, middle-aged multi-millionaire from the east coast before.

The autopsy of Peter Dutton’s disastrous 2025 election blamed the lack of a coherent economic argument during the campaign and the fact women and moderates had deserted the party in favour of the Teals and Labor.

And the response by some in the party to this clear warning was to organise the knifing of the incumbent female leader in favour of an ultra-conservative, white, middle-aged multi-millionaire from the east coast who, as shadow treasurer during last year’s campaign, was the architect of the non-existent economic policies that were identified as a reason Labor won in a landslide.

A slow clap for the Liberal Party please.

Taylor is so old school he makes John Howard look like a hippie. He’s a former management consultant with McKinsey who grew up on a cattle station and went to Oxford.

The bloke is literally the landed gentry.

How on earth is he going to connect with the moderates and left-leaning women the Libs need to win back to have any chance of unseating Albanese?

WA Liberal MP Melissa Price was on radio on Thursday morning arguing that “women do have a role” in her party.

And they do — they can serve tea and biscuits and do the vacuuming after shadow cabinet rises and goes outside for a cigar and a snifter of brandy.

Some Liberal MPs are so disconnected from reality they genuinely think their party doesn’t have a problem with women (unless they get lippy and fail to ensure the house is orderly and the children fed and bathed before hubby gets home from his management consultancy job). Please. In Liberal land they think the tradwife movement is tautological.

Some time on Friday the party will go into a room to vote and if they successfully elect a leader they will signal this with a puff of white smoke.

Hang on, that’s the papal conclave.

If you do see smoke coming from the party room it will likely be from the dumpster fire that’s smouldering inside.

Ley is now a lame duck. If she wins it won’t be by much. How do you command authority when you know anywhere between a third and a half of the people behind you aren’t really behind you?

And what does she do for a front bench? The fracas with the Nationals and the resignations by Taylor’s supporters means she’s lost so many heavy hitters she’ll have to bring on the water boy to make up the numbers.

Even the MPs who aren’t vociferously out to get her are damning her with faint praise.

This is what Liberal MP Tim Wilson said on TV when asked whether he would support her in the spill.

“If you want loyalty you have to show loyalty and I believe in loyalty very much as the foundation of trust and off the back of that I will then be going on, of course, as processes go on, to make sure I am making decisions in the best interests of the Liberal Party.”

You can watch it five times and still be none-the-wiser about what he’s saying. Hedging your bets for a front bench position much, Tim?

Ley can’t recover from this. She’s got to go. But if after that happens Angus Taylor’s the answer then the Liberals are asking the wrong question.

“Our country is in trouble,” Taylor warned us in his X post.

Sure is.