Angus Taylor is moving to challenge Sussan Ley — but not on his terms

Angus Taylor was solemn as he made the short walk from his office to Sussan Ley's, and as he fronted the press to declare his loss of confidence in the Liberal leader.

Taylor's move yesterday had been months in the making, fated since Ley won the leadership nine months ago by just four votes.

Days of fevered speculation had bubbled over, to the point that his own allies were growing frustrated with him.

Holed up in his office, Taylor joked with journalists staked outside during a brief appearance that the wait may continue, asking whether they had brought their sleeping bags.

By the time he decided to act, that lightness had evaporated.

The fact is, neither Taylor nor Ley wanted a leadership spill this week.

Taylor, who for months has only needed one or two more votes to win in a spill, has been biding his time until it was clear that Ley had lost all but her most rusted-on supporters.

That calculus changed last month when Taylor, still holidaying in Europe, caught wind that his conservative leadership rival Andrew Hastie was manoeuvring to challenge Ley.

Hastie backed down, unable to find enough support to challenge — but by last week, leadership speculation had been whipped up to the point that the party could no longer get clear air, and even some of Taylor's allies were saying it had to be now or never.

It leaves uncertainty about whether Taylor has solidified enough support to win a spill.

And it means Taylor, once he formally challenges, will now wear the ignominy of seeking to topple the first Liberal woman to lead the party less than a year after she took the job.

The member for Hume is well aware of how that may be perceived, but while announcing his resignation from Ley's shadow cabinet, Taylor explained that his concern for the party outweighed that.

"The Liberal Party is at the worst position it has been since 1944, when the party was formed. That is a confronting reality and we cannot ignore it," he said.

"We need to urgently restore confidence in the Liberal Party."

Ley's camp feels she did not get a fair go

The Liberals are in a deep depression, confronting polling so dire that their own MPs warn it would translate to a total wipe-out in some states at an election, and hand over their status as opposition to One Nation.

Every Liberal knows something must change, desperately. And few believed Ley would be taking them to the next election.

But Taylor will now have to make the case for change to a partyroom in which many of his colleagues feel the Coalition's right flank never gave Ley a fair chance.

Ley's attempts to reset the Coalition after being smashed at the May federal election were barely adhered to by some on the right.

On almost every policy issue, Ley has bowed to the demands of conservatives and the Nationals.

And on net zero, the most consequential policy debate since Ley was made leader, many right-wing MPs publicly defied the process she established to navigate the fraught issue for the Coalition.

Ley gave way to the party's right on that issue, too.

But those close to her believe the party's right was never going to be satisfied until it again held the reins.

It's why, despite some of the most dismal polling the party has ever witnessed, Ley's moderate and unaligned allies have continued to stand by her.

On Monday, Shadow Attorney-General Andrew Wallace (who was reshuffled into the senior portfolio after conservative Andrew Hastie quit the front bench) voiced the Ley camp's frustrations that she had never been given a chance.

"She is the first woman leader of the Liberal Party and were she to be deposed, I can almost guarantee you there'll be people out there saying, 'Oh … you guys have just politically assassinated the first female leader of the Liberal Party,'" Wallace said.

"I think that Sussan has done a good job, a very good job in difficult circumstances."

If Taylor succeeds in his coup, he will have to live with a disgruntled group of Liberals who feel Ley was deliberately destabilised before she was even given a chance to find her feet.

Waiting in the wings is Hastie, whose allies fell in with Taylor only after it became clear that Hastie could not win the leadership himself.

A close result will make it harder for Taylor to move forward without at least keeping one eye over his shoulder.

And a fifth take on the shadow ministry in a year will have to get to grips with new portfolios, again.

There are also things in Taylor's favour.

While the party's infighting provided a distraction from the Reserve Bank lifting interest rates last week, the pressure is returning for the government to address inflation — a difficult task to accomplish without causing some pain to voters.

Equally, the federal government has begun signalling that its federal budget in May will have to take steps towards dealing with both inflation and a built-in deficit.

As one Liberal put it: "They will have to do s***, which means then we can do other s***, or oppose that s***."

And a migration policy that has been ready since Christmas may also help to pull the party out of its tailspin, and give Liberal-weary voters a reason to return.

But if Taylor succeeds, his first task will be to justify to the public why Ley had to go, and how he will be any different.

Given that in the days leading up to this spill, MPs themselves were not sure of Taylor's vision for the Liberals, he is likely to have a difficult task convincing voters of how he is different to a leader they had barely gotten to know.