The Nationals split shows the foundations of right-wing politics are shifting

The split between the Liberals and Nationals runs far deeper than the bills that triggered this latest divorce crisis.

It is impossible to view this week's events without the broader context of their relationship, how the electoral map is changing and what that means for right-wing politics in Australia.

Whether permanent or temporary, we are seeing electoral foundations shift. 

For most of the federation's history, two parties — split between the city and country — have been at the heart of conservative politics. That status quo is now being seriously challenged, by both inner-city independents that have already thinned the ranks of Liberal MPs, and now by a surging One Nation.

Support for Pauline Hanson's party has gone up significantly in the eight months since the federal election. What is less clear is precisely how much it has gone up.

The party got 6.4 per cent of the national first preference vote last May. Polls this month have recorded far higher support, at levels between 15 and 22 per cent.

Of course, it's still very early in the parliament, things can easily change and we've seen in very recent history how a party can fall apart when under the pressure of an election campaign.

But if One Nation is recording 20 per cent nationally, it will be seeing much stronger results in parts of regional Australia, especially in Queensland. That significantly changes the context of this Coalition divorce.

Nationals fear electoral wipe-out

Look at the 10 seats with the highest One Nation first preference vote.

Seven of them are currently held by Nationals: Capricornia, Gippsland, Flynn, Parkes, Hinkler, David Littleproud's own seat of Maranoa, and Wide Bay.

Two of the seats in the top 10 are Labor-held, and the Liberals hold just one: Scott Buchholz's seat of Wright.

After the Liberals were gutted by independent wins in the cities, the Nationals are contemplating the prospect of suffering the same fate in the bush, and the consequences of the conservative vote splintering.

The Nationals fear a repeat of the 1998 Queensland state election, where One Nation won 11 seats and came second in a further 23.

That result was off a statewide vote of 22.7 per cent — which is within spitting distance of what One Nation is currently polling nationally.

And so, the National Party is asserting its identity, and, in the words of David Littleproud, it's "sovereignty".

Where does it go from here for Australia's conservative parties? There are several broad options.

Option A: The Coalition reunites, again 

While there are forces pushing the Nationals and Liberals apart, there continues to be a lot pulling them together, and a reconciliation remains the simplest resolution to this crisis.

This is a very longstanding political relationship, for very good reason. Short of a major shake-up in election results, it is hard to see how either party can form a government without the other.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley had been giving the Nationals time to reconsider its decision, knowing that reuniting becomes more difficult the moment she appoints Liberals to fill the vacancies in her shadow cabinet.

So, with that decision made, how could the Coalition reunite from here? Littleproud has been quite clear that the biggest beef he has is with the Ley and her leadership.

"I had a great relationship with Peter Dutton," he said yesterday. "He was a man of great integrity and we had a great Coalition."

If that wasn't clear enough, he also declared: "Our party room has made it clear that we cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley."

The unspoken bit being: if the leader changes, the Nationals might reconsider.

The Nationals can't pick the opposition leader. That is within the Liberal Party's sovereignty. But they can see the pressure that Ley is under and this only ratchets it up further.

What else would the Nationals want before they come back to the table? Would they be prepared to compromise on anything? And would Liberal MPs be happy to get back into bed with someone who has twice now walked away from their relationship?

Littleproud wants to maintain his party's sovereignty, but it's not really feasible for two parties to maintain differing policy platforms while also sitting in a joint party room that requires shadow cabinet solidarity.

And if the Coalition gets back together without resolving the underlying tensions, there's always the risk we end up back here for a third time.

Option B: The parties go their own way

If there's no renewing of vows, the two parties will go to the next election as separate entities, running separate campaigns.

While it lets the parties chart their own courses and preserve their political identities, it is a path full of risks and booby traps.

They would have separate (and probably different) policy platforms and their own sets of portfolio holders.

Presumably, Liberals would run candidates in Nationals-held seats and, if One Nation does maintain strong support, we could see some complicated three-way races in the bush.

They would have to disentangle their organisational structure in Queensland, where the Liberals and Nationals operate as a single party.

If, at the end of that, the Nationals and Liberals combined have enough votes on the floor to form a government, they'd be forced to try to reconcile their policy differences.

Some people who would've been expecting to be cabinet ministers would get demoted. People who had been campaigning against each other would be sharing a party room.

In short, the process would inevitably end with some feeling aggrieved and Labor watching on in glee.

It would be the kind of negotiation we commonly see across European parliaments, where coalition agreements are often negotiated after an election, but in Australia we don't have that kind of political culture.

Option C: This is the beginning of something bigger

The third possibility is that we haven't yet seen the end of the political tectonic plates shifting.

Barnaby Joyce has already defected. Could we see more? Joyce indicated yesterday that more than one of his former colleagues were toying with the idea.

Could conservative members of the Liberal Party jump ship to the Nationals? Could One Nation implode, in the same way it has before (all 11 One Nation members who won seats in the 1998 Queensland election were no longer with the party two years later)? And where do independents land in all of this?

The next election is a very long time away. Is there a chance that the parties and alliances look significantly different by the time we get there?

At this point, it may seem unlikely, but we can't rule out the idea that we're still in the early stages of a longer-term restructure of conservative politics.

It's hard to avoid the parallels with the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform party in the UK over recent years.

There, a political system that has been dominated by two large parties has seemingly become a system of five or more significant parties.

Here, if the results of the next election look anything like current polling, the number of seats that aren't a two-party contest between Labor and the Liberals/Nationals would go up dramatically.

And on current polling, most of the pain will be felt by the Nationals and Liberals, not Labor.