Scott Prasser | The Liberal Party is in utter disarray and a civil war is needed

It is thus time for the long-simmering war between the conservatives and so called "progressives" to be out in the open, even if it leads to a split in non-Labor ranks and as in the 1940s, the formation of a new conservative party rather than the pale version the Liberal Party has now become led by insipient leaders, fractured by factions and pursuing policies indistinguishable from opponents.

Liberals today could do well to remember the lessons their founder, Robert Menzies, drew from the 1943 defeat. He quickly saw the UAP was beyond redemption and a new party was needed.

The UAP he observed, was just "a collection of competing captains and not a team" - just like the Liberals have today are dominated by factions and manipulated by backroom operatives.

Menzies also noted how "the non-Labor forces and supporters are vague about their essential political faith" and had "no comprehensive statement of our political objectives" - like the Liberals today pursuing policies marked by spending extravaganzas and policy appeasement that betray long held principles, practices and policies and provide few political successes.

Menzies saw the UAP had "no constant political organisation in the electorates", its membership numbers had fallen to insignificance.

Consequently, there was no conduit from the electorate to parliamentary members, poor campaigning capabilities and resources wasted on crude public advertising campaigns.

Isn't this the Liberals today that ignore its rank and file and seems to be dominated by pollsters, focus groups and too reactive to media views?

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The Victorian Liberals this week, in suspending of one of their newly endorsed and elected members for defending women, is a further case in point.

Menzies succeeded in bringing the disparate, non-Labor groups together to form a new political party with a consistent. political philosophy and clear about what it was for.

At the same time, Menzies was unequivocal what the new Liberal Party was against.

Early on, only a year after the 1943 election debacle, he successfully opposed Labor's 1944 post-war reconstruction and democratic rights referendum that sought 14 additional federal powers and extension of wartime controls across a wide range of areas for a period of five years because it would give too much power to government.

Later, the Liberals opposed Labor's attempted bank and airline nationalisations and, in office, delivered policies that were distinctly different from its opponents like increased home ownership in suburbia though sneered at by the intellectuals.

This is now where the Liberal Party across Australia is. It needs to confront its crisis head on, even if it means a split and realignment in the non-Labor parties' ranks that includes the National Party. To just hope the electoral pendulum will swing them back into office misunderstands their parlous situation at both federal and state levels.

They need to decide what they stand for and what they are against, reject those recreational policies presently dominating the political agenda and return Australia to policies that ensure our economic wellbeing and leave individuals with the freedom, independence, and responsibility of deciding their own lives.

The Nationals might have exploited the Liberals' poor leadership, factionalism, and policy vacuum and achieved what the 1987 Joh for Canberra campaign failed to do - take over the non-Labor cause.

But they had their own leadership woes with five changes since 2013, personal scandals, policy blunders and lack the intellectual rigour, political nous and anything like a philosophy other than pork barrelling, to execute such a strategy and their state branches send mixed messages about their values and policies.