The party's over

The collapse of the Conservatives in the UK is a rude awakening for Australian Liberals

The average term in office for a federal opposition leader elected this century is 122 weeks. Sussan Ley has served just seven of them and she can rest assured that there will be harder ones to come.

The good news, however, is that Labor’s domination of parliament is more fragile than it might appear. A government that occupies 63 per cent of the Chamber with less than 35 per cent of the vote is vulnerable to factionalism and changes in the public mood, as Labour’s Kier Starmer has discovered.

Later this week, Starmer celebrate a year in office with a similar lukewarm mandate - 63 per cent of seats in the House of Commons on the back of 34 per cent of the popular vote.

Today, Labour’s popularity has tanked a third to less than a quarter (23 per cent) according to the most recent YouGov poll. Starmer is fighting off a backbench revolt over reforms to welfare payments. Commentators on both the left and the right are predicting he could face a leadership challenge within a year.

The bad news for Liberals searching for a flicker of promise is that few disaffected Labour voters are turning to the Conservatives. Last week’s poll puts Conservative support at 17 per cent, more than 5 points lower than at the General Election.

YouGov’s seat-by-seat analysis projects a devastating outcome for the Tories who would be reduced to minor party status with just 46 MPs in the 650 seat Parliament. The party would lose a dozen seats to the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party, but the big winner is Nigel Farage’s Reform.

Reform would pick up 67 seats from the Conservatives and 194 seats from Labour, putting Farage in the box seat to become Britain's next prime minister in a hung parliament.

In so far as UK politics can be seen as a portent for Australia, Ley's challenge