Yesterday's swift, Brutus-like disposal of Tony Abbott confirms that political fratricide is the new normal. Anyone who thought it was only Labor that had a penchant for back-stabbing is in for a rude awakening: Shakespearean skullduggery is now a cross-party pursuit.
It was the speed with which Turnbull plunged the knife that was most alarming. Wearing a smug grin as he left the party room with Julie Bishop - the Lady Macbeth of this polite coup - one got the impression that a technocrat had just bumped off a conviction politician.
Because for all his faults - and there were a fair few - Abbott at least believed in things.
He may not have always communicated those beliefs well, or defended them when they came under assault from the permanently offended chattering classes. (And here I'm thinking of his failure to overhaul the censorious Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.) But he gave the impression of being a leader bristling with ideas, even if some were too unpopular to express in our tut-tutting, Twitter-mobbing age.
Turnbull, by contrast, seems driven more by electoral calculations than political beliefs.
Sure, he trots out Liberal platitudes and has clearly been practising his fist-clenching in front of his bedroom mirror. But one is left with the distasteful view of a man who has stolen something he felt he couldn't win legitimately by his own volition: the Prime Ministership. To become PM via the party room, far from the madding crowd of Aussie voters, is nothing to be proud of.
Some anti-Abbott leftists have cheered Turnbull's assumption of power on the basis that he is "better" than Abbott on climate change and gay marriage.
The cynicism of it all, not to mention the masses-dodging elitism, is astounding
Bizarrely, those are pretty much the only two issues that a certain kind of 21st-century progressive cares about. Forget economics or industry or freedom - all the Left is interested in is shrinking humankind's allegedly filthy eco-footprint and allowing same-sex couples to get hitched.
And because Turnbull is "good" on those issues, they will cheer his coup. After all, what's the small matter of the 5,882,818 popular votes given to the Abbott-led Liberals/Nationals just two years ago in comparison with realising the green and gay-marriage dreams?
And thus have even lefties made themselves complicit in the Turnbull/Bishop knife-wielding, desperately hoping that their theft of the leadership will create an opening for supposedly progressive causes. The cynicism of it all, not to mention the masses-dodging elitism, is astounding.
Strikingly, some commentators, on both sides of the political spectrum, say Turnbull is more presentable than Abbott - he can "string a sentence together" and looks chilled-out with the media. In short, he's more expertly spun, more polished, smarter, on-message.
This is revealing, for it suggests that partly what we're witnessing is a coup by political insiders against those deemed by the media and others to be outsiders, against those considered to have bad views and a disagreeable style: Abbott and his team.
So there's more to this than Turnbull v Abbott. The fairly broad welcome given to Turnbull, on the grounds that he has correct views on climate change and same-sex marriage and is media-friendly, suggests this is fundamentally about the new political class casting out those who are too rough around the edges or old-fashioned in their views.
The removal of Abbott is an act of political cleansing, led by a media-savvy politician and supported by an anti-Abbott media. It feels like a new political establishment asserting its authority against a PM who had the temerity to hold moral and political views - on marriage, the climate - that run counter to contemporary chattering-class prejudices. So he had to go. It's an ugly, undemocratic affair.
Across the West, politics is becoming more oligarchical. From the smokeless committee rooms of the EU to all those backroom deals done by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during their fractious 10-year reign of Britain, politics is becoming court-like, echoing the antics of conniving princes from the pre-modern era rather than feeling truly, properly democratic.
This is a sad day for democracy, but a good day for political insiders
So it is in Australia, too, where elected leaders are swiftly swept aside and new leaders anointed, both by their party room and more importantly by the media.
These new PC oligarchies are strikingly intolerant of anyone who doesn't sing from their hymn sheet. Oppose gay marriage? You're out. Don't like Brussels? You're Europhobic. Aren't 100% behind the climate-change agenda? You're a denier. They sting and slur against anyone who has different views or who comes from a different moral universe to theirs.
This is a key theme of the Turnbull takeover. The media and others are partly cheering him for possessing views that Abbott doesn't, even though Abbott won an election on the basis of his views just two years ago. Think about that. This is a sad day for democracy, but a good day for political insiders.
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