Leadership tickets are a dime a dozen round this joint at the moment.  Last night it was the Two Tonys Ticket, perhaps inspired by the Wednesday prospect of Kevin and Julia going up against Kevin and Julie.  This morning it’s Joe Hockey and Peter Dutton, because what you need as a deputy is a bloke who doesn’t think he can hold his own seat.

The dream ticket of Wilson Tuckey and Bronwyn Bishop, alas, remains just that for the moment.  But there’s three days to go, so we live in hope.

As everyone has said repeatedly, neither Abbott nor Hockey is the answer to the Liberals’ problems currently.  Each would stand on one side of the deep faultlines that have opened up over the last three months and started shaking the party apart this week.  Neither could repair them.  The CPRS has been a uniquely intense issue for the Liberals, but the divisions it has created will last even if it is resolved, at least until the next election. The party will remain ready to split again on another issue that divides progressives and moderates.

They also need some sort of climate change policy.  As Turnbull said last night, if they go into the next election proposing to do nothing about climate change, it will be a disaster.  Even some of the most deluded denialists understand that. Fortunately there’s Andrew Robb’s Frontier Economics proposal ready-to-hand, although that wouldn’t satisfy the Nationals.  There’s a carbon tax, but rejecting the CPRS because it’s a giant tax only to replace it with a real giant tax wouldn’t quite work with the punters.  That only leaves winner-picking technology and energy efficiency investment.  Which, again, will be difficult given the Liberals are promising to cut the Budget back to 25% of GDP.

On the leadership, there are two issues: whether Turnbull will quit, and by how much Joe Hockey would beat Tony Abbott.

Turnbull would need a lobotomy before he backed away from a fight.  Watching his press conference last night, I was impressed with his aggression, his brio, his self-belief, which is clearly even greater than we had hitherto suspected.  In the immortal Keating phrase, he’s got more front than Mark Foys.  It was only later I realized he was actually enjoying himself, enjoying the opportunity to battle for something he genuinely believes in, feeling right at home in the middle of a fight to the death.

He also understands – as John Howard did – that the Liberals are singularly inept at disposing of their leaders.  Howard looked in Peter Costello’s eyes and knew he didn’t have that real hunger for the top job that impelled him through the 1980s and early 1990s.  Turnbull, similarly, will look around his party.  What does the man who took on Kerry Packer and won see?  A media-friendly lightweight.  A reactionary hiding in Senate obscurity.  A conservative who still believes in the monarchy and doesn’t believe in climate change.  A deputy repeatedly found wanting in Parliamentary combat over the last two years.

It’s almost Gulliver and the Lilliputians.

But Turnbull will come under immense pressure from moderates to step aside to maximise the chances of Hockey beating Abbott.  At some point, surely, his numbers man Michael Ronaldson will confront him with the maths.  A Turnbull-Abbott ballot risks handing the leadership to a man even more conservative than his idol John Howard.  But a Turnbull resignation would ensure Hockey, backed by moderates and unhindered by animosity from all sides toward Turnbull, defeats Abbott or is elected unopposed in a unity deal.

That all said, Turnbull is unlikely to care much about the Liberal Party after he leaves it.  It was only ever a vehicle for his ego and let’s be fair his enormous talent.  And it’s hard to see how Turnbull would resign unless he’s assured the CPRS would go through.  At least then his political death would have been in the cause of climate change.

Even so, from next week we’ll probably see Joe Hockey as leader, with Nick Minchin riding him hard to make sure he doesn’t upset the conservatives, and the Liberals opposing the CPRS and eventually running with a variant of the Frontier Economics model, much to the chagrin of the Nats and the party’s membership.  The Frontier Economics model is far lower-impact on households and business and can be dressed up as ‘greener’ than the CPRS (when it is even browner).  The sceptics will hate it but can live with it, particularly with Andrew Robb arguing for it.

The result? It will be an even worse disaster for the Liberals than they faced under Turnbull, but by then he’ll be long gone, off to some place where his formidable talents will be more appreciated. Perhaps he can help out at Copenhagen.