Next Saturday's Wentworth by-election is shaping up as an acid test for Scott Morrison.
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While neither he, nor other members of the party, have been able to clearly articulate why Turnbull had to go, it is widely accepted the former PM's failure to connect with voters during campaigning in the Queensland s44 by-elections played a big part.
His inability to gain traction gave enemies the ammunition to take their white anting to a new level.
Morrison eventually emerged as the best of the possible Liberal leaders and, by default, the Prime Minister, in what had been the mother of all political stuff-ups.
He had presented himself as a pragmatic centrist, willing and able to make the compromises necessary to clear the decks on energy policy and Catholic education funding.
And, as someone who had not been openly connected to the Abbott and Dutton conspiracy and had publicly supported Turnbull down to the wire, Morrison didn't appear to have blood on his hands.
This appealing narrative saw him emerge as the preferred PM over Bill Shorten within a fortnight.
That narrative began to unravel within weeks when reports that Morrison had been planning to replace Turnbull for months and that Dutton, who he devastatingly gazumped, had been his unwitting stooge, appeared.
Then there is the fact that despite his "hail fellow, well met" blokey affability and love of Dad jokes, Morrison is clearly reverting to type as the conservative hard liner trusted to "stop the boats" by Tony Abbott.
He has made no attempt to breathe fresh life into the NEG. This has disappointed its architect, Kerry Schott, who said "it [the reliability option] is something everyone agreed on. It's important we can encourage an increase in renewables in the knowledge the reliability of the system can be met".
Morrison's reaction to the recent IPCC report, which highlighted the need for coal to be phased out by 2050, was particularly disappointing in that he said there was nothing that required action by Australia.
His Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, repeated the highly contestable claim that without coal "the lights will go out on the east coast of Australia".
Then there is the PM's failure to immediately dismiss the Ruddock religious freedom review's recommendation for anti-discrimination laws to be watered down to make it possible for religious schools Australia wide to bar homosexual teachers and students.
This was despite the electorate voting almost two to one in favour of equality and tolerance late last year.
Many of the electors in Wentworth, which recorded an 80 per cent vote in favour of same sex marriage in 2017, will be unhappy the PM missed the cues from voters on their views of equal rights for non-heterosexual Australians.
Morrison's recent track record as a climate change denier and his failure to immediately condemn a push to legitamise institutionalised homophobic bigotry points to a much harder version of the Prime Minister than has been presented of late.
How that will play out in Wentworth next weekend remains to be seen.