Updated ,first published
Liberal MP Angus Taylor has quit Sussan Ley’s frontbench, setting up the second battle between the pair for control of the underperforming opposition.
The aspirant ended weeks of poisonous speculation on Wednesday evening when he visited Ley in her Canberra office to fire the starter’s gun on a leadership challenge to be held on Thursday afternoon or Friday.
“The Liberal Party is at the worst position it has been since 1944 when the party was formed. That is a confronting reality, and we cannot ignore it,” Taylor said in a press conference after leaving Ley’s office on Wednesday evening, adding it was a difficult decision.
“The situation right now is devastating for Australians, and for that reason, we need to urgently restore confidence in the Liberal Party.”
“We need to protect Australians’ way of life. We need to focus on restoring their standard of living. I don’t believe Sussan Ley is in a position to be able to lead the party as it needs to be led.”
Taylor did not specifically state his leadership intention under questioning but said, “what we need right now is strong leadership, clear direction and a courageous focus on our values”. Sources in Ley’s office said it was unusual that he did not make his intentions clear in the meeting between the pair.
The next step in triggering a spill is MPs calling for a special party room meeting for later in the week. Allies of Taylor, including frontbencher James Paterson, are likely to follow him in quitting Ley’s frontbench.
Conservatives had been waiting all week for Taylor to make clear his plans. Liberals, including one who described the situation as “high farce”, spent hours in their offices after question time waiting for Taylor to go public. Out of respect, Taylor did not want to visit Ley until she finished a late afternoon meeting with the Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
However, Ley finished the meeting before 5pm and was considering leaving her office to attend an event when Taylor walked to her office just after 7pm as she worked with staff on an upcoming migration policy.
“This isn’t how you behave if you have the numbers,” one Liberal said, labelling it the “TACO spill”, using the “Trump always chickens out” barb to criticise Taylor’s conviction and competence.
Part of the reason for Taylor’s delay was that his allies feared Ley would seek to gain an advantage once a spill was confirmed, potentially by calling a spill herself and scheduling a meeting for Thursday morning before a Taylor-supporting senator had returned to Canberra. MPs are required to be in the room to vote in a leadership spill.
Hours earlier, Labor ministers lined up to savage Taylor in question time. Defence Minister Richard Marles said Taylor had achieved nothing as opposition defence spokesman. The sharpest critique came from Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who went toe to toe with Taylor when he served as shadow treasurer.
“They should ask themselves, do they really want him to do to their party this term what he did to their economic credibility last term?” Chalmers said, adding that the former Rhodes scholar was born with a “silver foot in his mouth”.
“Just when we thought that they couldn’t go any lower on the economic credibility, [Taylor] says, hold my chardonnay.”
Many Liberals are not enamoured with either Ley or Taylor and feel despondent that the leadership turmoil has made the Liberal Party look like even more disorganised at the same time as One Nation surges in polling.
Ley has led the party to its worst-ever polling position and failed to put forward policy or principles on key issues such as immigration, having started her term with big ambitions to reground the party in mainstream Liberal values.
Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie withdrew last week from what was a three-cornered contest for the leadership after he was advised he did not have the numbers.
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