Wounded prime ministers tend not to survive.
Having narrowly won a Liberal leadership ballot against Peter Dutton on Tuesday, Malcolm Turnbull appears to have three options he can take himself, and one taken for him.
The first is call an early election and hope his bitterly divided party rallies behind him.
In that scenario, given current polls, Labor under Bill Shorten is almost certain to romp home in a landside.
At a coalition party room meeting after the spill he is understood to have reaffirmed the plan for an election close to the May 2019 deadline.
As well, the Liberal Party still has many candidates left to preselect and its finances need a boost to run a respectable campaign.
The second is to continue in the leadership with a freshened-up frontbench, but a disgruntled backbench which includes a former prime minister, an ex-deputy prime minister and a growing gaggle of former ministers.
The internal bleeding will continue and Turnbull will struggle to deal with continued sniping, especially from conservatives who have always distrusted their moderate leader.
While Dutton expressed his ongoing support for the PM after the spill, he also said he believed he had the "best prospect of leading the Liberal Party to success at the next election" - a sentiment he is unlikely to withdraw any time soon.
While not providing a detailed critique of the government, he cited immigration, pressure on infrastructure from migrants, the drought, energy prices and health and education as issues which needed to be addressed.
The third option for Turnbull is resign, in the knowledge that Dutton only needs to convince a handful more Liberal colleagues to end his prime ministership.
This would avoid a second damaging challenge and give him a chance to move on without further fuss.
Another option lies out of his hands.
If the rumours are to be believed and Dutton's supporters try again later in the week, or when parliament sits in September, the leadership could be seized from Turnbull.
Dutton then has just under eight months to pull together an election platform and reunite the party.
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