Taylor may shoot for the summit. Even his backers will settle for base camp

Depending on who you talk to in the Liberal Party, the early mail on Angus Taylor’s leadership prospects ranges from “he will be gone by the end of 2026” to “he will put in a good showing but lose in 2028.”

Some Liberal MPs, especially those in the centre-right and unaligned groupings who were booted out of shadow cabinet, are upset. But most moderates were spared a purge of the shadow ministry, and the 34-17 margin (in the Taylor-Sussan Ley leadership ballot) has drawn a line under the contest.

Now Taylor’s real task begins: restoring the Coalition as a credible alternative government.

Taylor and his allies have just executed a relatively bloodless coup.

First, they stayed the hand of the younger Andrew Hastie in the contest to replace Sussan Ley and then, after prevaricating for most of a week, Taylor and his crew pulled off the double and brought the career of the first woman to lead the Liberal Party to an unhappy end.

Taylor, his deputy Jane Hume and his allies have also pulled off a deft refresh off the frontbench, bringing back harder-edged conservatives including Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Hastie and Sarah Henderson while promoting younger talent including Tim Wilson and Claire Chandler to the two most senior economic portfolios.

Of the 22 Liberals in the 30-member shadow ministry, 12 are now under 50 (up from seven) and 10 MPs are over 50.

That matters because as even one of Taylor’s close allies admits, when not hyperbolically claiming the Albanese government is the worst in Australian history: “Gus might be able to get us to base camp in 2028 [the next federal election] but it’s hard to see him reaching the summit.”

Why some Liberals think it’s a good idea to regularly insult Australians’ intelligence and tell them they elected the worst government in history just nine months ago is a question for another time.

Another Taylor ally told me in the lead-up to the leadership ballot: “We need to make generational change. We need to shock Labor. What we need to do is put in place the mechanisms for success over a longer period of time. We need a five-year pathway to 2031.”

In other words, it may not be until 2031 – under a leader who is not Taylor – that the Coalition has a chance of winning government. So Taylor’s allies are glum rather than cock-a-hoop because they realise their man probably only gets one shot at leading the party and that’s now – given his age (59), the need for further renewal and, most of all, because they can count.

Labor holds a record 94 seats in the lower house and the Coalition a paltry 42. A Taylor win or even forcing the Albanese government into minority in 2028 would be a near-miracle. As a Ley supporter observes: “Every time they claim Albanese is the worst government in history, they’re telling voters they got it wrong … even though he won 94 seats.”

The predictions of bruised and cranky Ley supporters about Taylor’s prospects are, unsurprisingly, far more pessimistic than the new leader’s supporters’.

“I think the party room is going to start realising by the end of March they’ve made a terrible mistake and he’s not up to it,” a second Ley supporter told me this week. “They will switch to Hastie by the end of the year.”

Of course, that would mean installing Hastie (or Wilson) before they may be ready to lead – and so prematurely burn through a future leader.

The idea that Taylor could be ousted by the end of the year, as sketched out by the second Ley supporter, seems less likely given his colleagues’ benchmark for his success should be low, in line with the Liberals’ record-low poll numbers.

Angus Taylor is no Tony Abbott. He risks damaging his own credibility, rather than that of the government, if he attempts to emulate Abbott, one of his mentors, and simply opposes everything. Taylor is not facing an unstable minority government at war with itself.

Yet he has already signalled opposition to any change to the capital gains tax – as Labor has foreshadowed could be made in the next budget – and labelled it a tax that would reduce the supply of housing, rather than a tax discount for investment properties.

The new opposition leader’s situation is less like Abbott’s in 2010 and more like that faced by John Howard in 1985, when he became Liberal leader after Bob Hawke’s second election win. Howard realised that the way to return the Liberals and Nationals to base camp and a chance of reaching the summit was by restoring the Coalition’s economic credibility. He backed some of the Hawke government’s free-market reforms.

There is an argument that this kept the Coalition in opposition for longer at the time, but it also set up Howard to lead a long-term government from 1996 – because the parties’ economic and policy credentials had been restored. That, rather than opposition for its own sake, should be Taylor’s goal, even if it means he has to pass the torch to Hastie or Wilson one day.

It’s not clear that Taylor has realised this. He doesn’t sound credible when he opposes tax policy sight unseen, or describes the Albanese government in overblown terms.

There are people in the Coalition who believe a modest structural reform to the tax system is reasonable and that the opposition should simply bank the savings and move on.

There are two more things Taylor can do to begin the task of restoring the Coalition’s credibility: release the election review conducted by party elders Nick Minchin and Pru Goward, which has been put on hold after a legal warning from Peter Dutton, and address the Coalition’s failures.

As that first Ley supporter puts it: “It’s the worst election result in the party’s history and they haven’t even released a summary document [of the review], let alone a conclusive document.

“I’m still waiting for a Liberal MP to say they’re sorry – ‘We got it wrong, we let you down, we made mistakes and we will make sure we don’t do it again’ … but they can’t even do that.”

Taylor, at least, has apologised for the opposition’s decision to oppose a tax cut. He should go further. The road to credibility for a federal opposition runs through sensible commentary and constructive criticism, not hyperbole. It must present itself as a “safe change”, as Howard realised and as Albanese did in 2019-22 when he strategically backed certain Coalition government decisions and opposed others.