How many readers believe that any political party in the democratic world can continue to win every single election for the next (let’s say) 30 years? Anybody? Okay, move to Australia and let me ask if any of you believe that the Coalition will win the next 9 or 10 elections on the trot. Anyone? How about the next four or five?

My point here is that just about everyone knows that in a well-functioning democracy the ‘In Party’ will be very hard pressed to win three or four elections before being tossed out in favour of the ‘Out Party’ – and that is certainly the case in any democracy that uses a majoritarian voting system such as first past the post or preferential.

Bear that in mind because I want to tell you why I think the argument put forward earlier this week by Chris Mitchell – former editor-in-chief of The Australian – is so wrong-headed. The gist of Mitchell’s argument is that right of centre voters simply have to rally around Malcolm Turnbull ‘whatever [their] feelings about [him because] the real alternative to the Coalition is Bill Shorten’s Labor-Greens alliance’. And that would be bad news in terms of the deficit, lower taxes and energy prices.

That’s the gist of Mitchell’s claim. He does, though, state emphatically that ‘it was a mistake to roll Abbott’ and reminds readers that (when he was editor-in-chief) The Australian’s editorials throughout 2015 urged ‘the Coalition’s bed-wetters not to cut down a first-term PM’ (as did, he says, Paul Kelly, Chris Kenny and Dennis Shanahan).

Now a quibbler might point out that Niki Savva, Peter van Onselen, even Janet Albrechtsen and others in the stable of regular opinionistas for his newspaper did, in fact, favour the Turnbull coup. Indeed Savva had for months and months pre-coup been vitriolic in her criticisms, as had PVO, in a way no writer on the paper since the coup has been an unrelenting attacker of Malcolm.

But leave that aside. Mitchell basically thinks that the Andrew Bolts and Terry McCranns and some Spectator Australia writers who think a Turnbull loss is on balance a less bad outcome long-term than holding one’s nose and voting for the defenestrating coupster Turnbull ‘are deluded’.   Mitchell’s conclusion is that ‘conservative bed-wetters should see they are no better than the bed-wetters who undermined Abbott’, oh and that Malcolm should put Tony in Cabinet.

This is more or less the Miranda Devine argument. In my view, it is wholly unpersuasive. Here, in a nutshell, is why:

1. No one sensible doubts that Turnbull is better than Shorten. But that’s not the test, at least it’s not the test if you think about politics as a long-term dynamic contest. Turnbull is personally further to the left than Abbott. (If Mitchell doubts that I am happy to make my stand on this point alone.) By moving left and parking the party closer – some would say a lot closer – to Labor you shift the whole political spectrum to the left. This gives Labor breathing space to go even further left (in a way it could not with Abbott as PM) as well as opening up a gaping hole for Pauline Hanson on the right flank.

So the better, long-term test is to ask: Four or five elections from now would we conservative voters be better off seeing the Libs lose now (assuming they stay with Turnbull) and reforming as a more right wing party to fight –and at some point win – elections in the future based on core values? Or, would we be better off holding our noses and supporting Team Turnbull in the hope it can win one more election, maybe two, before the really left-wing Labor comes in? Which scenario looks better to conservative voters judging from the perspective of, say, 2025 or 2030?

Now, this is a debatable call, I know. But it’s patently ridiculous to claim that from the longer-term vantage the Delcons (I plead guilty and embrace the term) are obviously wrong and Mitchell and Devine are obviously right.   Carry on with the Team Turnbull experiment and there may not be much of a Liberal Party left in 15 years. And one or two Shorten wins followed by some sort of return to a Liberal Party that actually seems to believe in things, right wing things, may well leave us better off in 15 years than a little more of Team Turnbull now (and more capturing of the party by ‘moderates’ and more of the same total lack of belief in core values such as free speech).

2. That is the long-term principled point. Then there is the straight out ‘political parties cannot reward treachery and disloyalty, even if it means taking a loss’. This point is virtually evolutionary. We know that Turnbull was a leaker, a whiteanter and someone about whom the words ‘loyal’ and ‘dependable’ have never been uttered save ironically. If conservatives get knifed by the Liberal lefties, and now have to ignore that and ‘play nice’, that sends a strong signal that we’re patsies. That sort of Mother Theresa altruistic capitulation is a disaster around bullies; it doesn’t work in the school playground; it’s a terrible evolutionary strategy. They started the treachery and backstabbing. They can hardly complain now when it threatens them. More to the point, it is better for the party (long-term I stress) to send a signal about what happens to backstabbing bed-wetters, the first ones. The Liberal party needs to send that signal if it wants to win back some of the million plus voters it lost (and counting).

3. We now live in the post-Brexit and Trump as President world. (And by the way, basically no one on Mitchell’s newspaper predicted either of those outcomes and almost no one favoured them, the same being true of Turnbull as it happens – which you might think is pretty telling given that my experience giving a fair few talks to the Liberal base is that it is wildly in favour of both Brexit and Trump.) So my point three is this: In the Trump and Brexit world is Turnbull the person you want as leader? Ditto for Julie Bishop by the way.

As someone who predicted, in print, both Brexit and Trump let me go out on a limb and say this. Turnbull will get slaughtered at the next election if he’s the leader, and deservedly so. More and more long-time Lib voters are moving the Delcon way on this. The fact most media commentators decry this is as relevant as it was with Brexit and Trump.

Oh, and we are better than those who defenestrated Abbott. A lot better. We actually believe in something.

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.