The fatal mistake, from those concerned with Turnbull's security, would be to imagine that Abbott is a loose cannon or is using a scattergun approach of firing without discipline in every direction. Or that he is so consumed with rage and desire for revenge that he is acting without cunning to eradicate not only Turnbull but Turnbullism; that he has lost all judgment.

That may be the manner of much of the commentary on Abbott's incessant public interventions. But there is every evidence Abbott's mission is being plotted, that his statements are being coordinated (even if Abbott is sometimes opportunistic about the timing), and that Abbott is intent not only on playing with the heads of Turnbull and his inner circle but with the minds of the parliamentary Liberal Party, the wider Liberal Party and the electorate.

Abbott does not mean to go away. He cannot be shamed into doing so; he is beyond shame and deaf to appeals to loyalty to team, leadership or party. A concerted attempt to be rid of him – say, by an attempt on his preselection – may in fact play into his hands, if only by bringing on a battle. He wants, politically, to assassinate Turnbull, but anyone who wants to kill him, politically first, had better not miss.

Many people dislike Abbott, and despise even more his politics, philosophy, and capacity to polarise and divide the electorate. He's often called mad, as in the "Mad monk". He is seen as impulsive, as wanting judgment, and as a sort of political pyromaniac, a little boy compulsively playing with matches and seeking to light bushfires. Early experience as a warrior for the National Civic Council gave him tactical skills in blowing up debates and confrontations he could not win.

Abbott has many deficiencies, not least in his judgment of the mood and temper of colleagues and the community. But he can be ruthlessly self-aware when he must be. He can plan, and plot, and stick to a script. If he had deficiencies in that in the past, before he became opposition leader eight years ago, some were knocked out of him by his former chief of staff Peta Credlin's relentless management.

Now, as in 2010, or for that matter 2013, everyone Abbott is doing is planned, scripted and belongs inside a wider framework; a legacy Abbott intends to leave his party and the nation. Even then, most of those who underestimated or misjudged him will see that legacy as a continuation of his skill at wrecking things and obtaining revenge on Turnbull. They may fail to recognise that, as Abbott sees it, his attempts to blow up Turnbull and Turnbullism is not personal, or actuated by a desire for revenge, but is a reluctantly embraced duty to advance alternative ideas about how the nation should be governed. And that, having largely (but not completely) given up hope that the party may turn to him again, his could be the romantic, redemptive sacrifice that puts Australian conservatism on the right path again.

For right path, think not so much some sort of libertarian straitjacket or dogmatic set of economic prescriptions, but the steady, cautious traditionalism of John Howard.

Abbott has always revered Howard, even if they have little in common by way of background, philosophy or temperament; it may be Abbott's ultimate delusion that he is a man somewhat in Howard's mould. Yet they do have something in common – habits of seeing almost everything in political terms, of calculating how events, even unexpected events, can be used for advantage, and a certain dogged attachment to some core values even as they both demonstrate ruthlessness in ditching policies, promises, ideas and pretended ideals if it is to their political advantage.

And despite careers of violent somersaults, U-turns, dumped pet policies and abandoned friends, each can claim a certain consistency of approach and style. Howard would talk of how people knew him, more or less trusted his instincts, even in new circumstances, and had come to respect him, perhaps even to like him, even where they disagreed. People, rightly, have never come to like or trust Abbott, but Abbott is perhaps more successful than anyone in modern politics (except perhaps Anthony Albanese and Pauline Hanson) in seeming to be a known, if somewhat puzzling, quantity. Not quite predictable, but you would generally know where he is coming from.

That's not something one could say about Turnbull. People thought they had his measure two years ago, but he failed to live up to optimistic expectations. He disappointed many hoping and expecting that he could introduce some personality, style, class and courage into national leadership. Even many of those who support his party, and prefer him as leader (certainly against Abbott), are now uncertain about where he stands on anything, whether he actually believes in or stands for anything, and whether he is prepared to take any sort of risks. We no longer feel we know him; we are losing our respect for his essential character.

The signs are that the nation is reconciled to a return to Labor government, probably in 2019. That includes a certain acceptance of Bill Shorten as its leader. But, as with Turnbull, there is no evidence the public has much warmed to Shorten, nor think that they know the real him. At best he doesn't frighten anyone much, and Coalition attempts to portray him as a cunning and dangerous monster, with a secret agenda to bring down civilisation, seem doomed to failure. There is more risk of his boring everyone to death.

Some may think Abbott will get some sort of comeuppance or that he will lose face, even among conservatives, when the "no" case in the same-sex marriage poll loses, and by a big margin. The very idea of a plebiscite (if, in Abbott's case, a compulsory one run by the Electoral Commission) was Abbott's. Turnbull, when it was proposed as Coalition policy, vehemently opposed it, even if he later went along with it. The plebiscite idea came from people opposed to current legislation before the parliament, and was seized on both as a means of frustrating an immediate binding debate, of delaying and, they hoped, to run up against the intrinsic conservatism of the electorate in constitutional or social policy matters.

Abbott swiftly, and without any election, made himself one of the main standard bearers of the "no" campaign, even suffering the embarrassment of opposition from members of his immediate family. Perhaps he hoped for some miracle that could suddenly swing public opinion, but he can have entertained no illusion that a "no" outcome was likely. He knew he was on the losing side. But that did not embarrass him, or make him less wholehearted, because it also served to reinforce and cement his image as a standard bearer of moral conservatism, predictable, even (from his point of view) honourable, and certainly not abject in defeat. He will have fought the good fight. By contrast, Turnbull will be relieved by a "yes" result, but hardly vindicated. He has scarcely campaigned for it.

It is from the same perspective that one should look at Abbott's speech in London this week to climate-change sceptics. It was predictably labelled as loopy, and a good many people were reminded that he is in the denialists' camp, and that he sees people fervent about the need for urgent action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as under the influence of witchcraft. Commentaries also emphasised that the speech was arranged so as to do maximum damage to any attempt by the Turnbull cabinet to develop an energy policy that sets targets for renewable energy or emission controls.

After the speech, the cabinet seemed (at least from the official leaks) to greatly watere down original proposals under consideration, and to abandon targets. Yet again, Abbott seemed to be setting the agenda. Yet again, Turnbull seemed to be reacting not leading, more afraid of his party's conservatives than concerned with the public interest, the long term and statesmanship. Yet again, Turnbull and his colleagues shrank from direct attacks on Abbott's conscious sabotage; the most that could be obtained were snipey (and entirely accurate) criticism that, on climate change policy, as so much else, Abbott has been all over the shop over the years, often supporting the policies he now decries.

Even Abbott supporters (or those who agree more with Abbott's current views on climate change than Turnbull's) expressed annoyance at Abbott's mischief, increasingly concerned that the image of disunity and irresolution in government is making Turnbull's position (and even that of a post-Turnbull government) irretrievable.

To this, the Abbott riposte, from his speech, was: "The heart of any recovery, though, has to be an honest facing of facts and an insistence upon intellectual rigour. More than ever, the challenge of leadership is to say what you mean and do what you say. The lesson I've taken from being in government, and then out of it, is simply to speak my mind. The risk, when people know where you stand, is losing their support. The certainty, when people don't know where you stand, is losing their respect."

Or, from a later part of the speech, and more defiantly: "The only rational choice is to put Australian jobs and Australia's standard of living first; to get emissions down but only as far as we can without putting prices up. After two decades' experience of the very modest reality of climate change but the increasingly dire consequences of the policy to deal with it, anything else would be a dereliction of duty as well as a political death wish.

"I congratulate the Global Warming Policy Foundation for your commitment to rational inquiry; your insistence that the theory must be made to fit the facts, rather than the other way round; your concern to do good, rather than just to seem good; and for the hope I share with you: that, in the end, the best policy will turn out to be the best politics."

Those who read the speech, as opposed to the commentary on it, will recognise it as a calculated and carefully assembled, even thoughtful, tract, conscious of its audience, even as they recognise that many of its arguments are tosh and heretical. To merely call it screwy, or erratic, is to suggest an incoherence or studied ignorance that is not there. Abbott knows exactly what he is being consciously unknowing about.

We are promised that, on parliament's return in the week ahead, there will be a surprise centrepiece that will make the announced energy policy more coherent, as well as putting alternative policies, whether from Labor or the Greens, in a starker and more disadvantageous relief. Perhaps, assuming that Turnbull and his ministers can package it and sell it, something they have struggled to do as they have tried to politicise arguments about coal, power prices, gas exports and targets for renewables. Just before his coup against Abbott, Turnbull spoke dismissively of leaders who could speak only on slogans. He's right, yet he has often proven too wordy, too inclined to lecture and far less able than his predecessor to use pithy phrase.

Turnbull knows Abbott is trying to dare him into a direct confrontation. With some understanding of Abbott's tactics and potential ambushes, Turnbull does little more than be dismissive, deflect comments or express mild annoyance. His problem, however, is that inaction also plays into Abbott's hands, because of the way it continues to distract colleagues, the parliament, commentators and the public, sucks oxygen from government campaigns and erodes his authority.

As things stand, a decade hence, people will struggle to identify the Turnbull interregnum with a lasting policy, program or idea. By contrast, they may recall the Abbott interregnum with a shudder of horror, but, by golly, they will remember it.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com