Illustration: Simon Letch Few expect Abbott to stoop so low as to become Malcolm Turnbull's Kevin Rudd. And fewer still, objectively speaking, give the ex-PM any realistic chance of resuming his party's leadership. Of course, the grieving Abbott probably harbours such hopes, because leaders invariably do. Exhibit 1 is Turnbull himself, who was so wounded after Abbott knocked him off in December 2009 that he announced he was off in 2010. He was quickly, and rather easily, talked around when appeals from supporters touched his ambitious heart. Their arguments had spoken directly to Turnbull's twin convictions that not only was he destined to be prime minister, but that Abbott was in essence an incomplete alternative whose two-dimensional combativeness would see him fail the test of national leadership. In other words, that the Lodge could still be attainable if he, Turnbull, was prepared to break the habit of a lifetime and be patient. Even so, his leadership ambitions came to be regarded as so much of a joke by the party's Right that they were usually classified as harmless. "The party will never go back to Turnbull, everyone knows it," one Right figure confidently predicted earlier this year. That said, Turnbull's assessment of his successor's flaws would be sorely tested by Abbott's surprising efficacy as opposition leader in the 2010 "dead-heat" poll and by his subsequent landslide triumph in 2013. Like it or not, Abbott had achieved what Turnbull could not by uniting his party and leading it from the wilderness. Yet here they are now. Turnbull as Prime Minister and the new high priest of inclusive optimism, and Abbott, the great partisan who is now supposedly a feather duster. Don't believe it is that simple.

Malcolm Turnbull now has his own version of Gillard's Rudd dilemma – what to do with a wounded ex-PM who won't leave. Credit:Andrew Meares Among the less remarked upon grenades tossed by Abbott in a fawning post-dispatch interview with Sydney radio shock jock Ray Hadley on Tuesday was this swipe at his successor's previous role as opposition leader. "All the way through I've stood for things and back in 2009 the Coalition was in diabolical difficulty, absolutely diabolical difficulty, because we were making weak compromises with a bad government," he said. It bears repeating: Turnbull had been "making weak compromises with a bad government". Those "weak compromises", by the way, went to Turnbull's convictions on the science of climate change, and his preference for a market mechanism – a value on which Abbott had been a self-described "weather vane". He continued to Hadley: "I said that the job of the then leader of the opposition, the leader of the Coalition, was to stand for things, was to establish some clear policy positions on which to run and fight an election. Now this is always true. It's always true in government or in opposition. You've got to stand for things. You've got to fight for things." Abbott's media toadies did him no favours with their uncritical support, and the Hadley interview, if it could be dignified with such a term, was a case in point. Despite Abbott's pledge to indulge in no sniping, the radio-hagiography, his first post-defeat broadcast appearance, contained several such barbs. And they have kept coming since.

A subsequent date with Neil Mitchell on 3AW on Thursday morning – an actual interview this time, taking place as Turnbull and Scott Morrison welcomed National Reform Summit leaders to Canberra to discuss big ideas – was more instructive again. It revealed Abbott's ongoing refusal to accept that anything substantial went wrong, other than the betrayal of his colleagues losing their nerve in the face of some bad polls. Pressed on the politically disastrous 2014 budget, which contained a slew of broken promises – unquestionably the moment his leadership began to unravel – Abbott maintained it had been the right formula for the country but simply "too gutsy" for the Parliament. Missing was any acceptance that a PM explicitly elected to restore trust in government after the Gillard "no-carbon-tax" experience had instantly breached that faith and then failed to explain why. As for Turnbull, Abbott revealed he had never trusted his communications minister, and had always expected a tilt would come. "I have often said that Malcolm didn't stay in the Parliament to be someone else's minister," he said. This observation invites another: If Abbott remains in the Parliament, as now looks increasingly likely, he will not be there as "someone else's minister". This ain't over yet.

Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.