Under fire: Tony Abbott. Credit:Luis Ascui The heartland is bleeding. Tony Abbott said this week his door was always open and that he had always encouraged his MPs to approach him with feedback. They know first hand that is nonsense. Getting past his chief of staff is proving too big a hurdle for some. Their patience is exhausted. Their loyalty has been taken for granted. Abbott's MPs had stayed in formation last year behind a blunt instrument budget that was so far from the promise made to voters that it looked suicidal. They had swallowed hard and agreed to "knuckle down" to the retail work of selling breaches to voters – some economic pain now, for a solid gain in living standards later. What was their reward? Unflagged backflips, self-inflicted distractions, and half-hearted negotiations with the cross benches marked by an indignant attitude from ministers that the government alone has a mandate. What goodwill they did have was being squandered on an ideological flight of fancy. Still, they were urged to get on with it – to show some steel by robustly defending cuts to pensions, universities, healthcare, and the ABC – all of it in direct contradiction to election promises. And yet still they bit their lips. But everyone has a breaking point, and it was the knights and dames debacle that touched off what one Liberal branded a "backbench shitstorm" threatening to blow Abbott away. Of course, the seeds of that discontent reach much further back than handing royal titles back to the very palace which hands them out.

Indeed, the malaise at the heart of Abbott's now beleaguered prime ministership is a function of the deliberately created culture of conflict and strategic supremacy his office projected from the start. That supremacy is now its most central embarrassment - exhibit 1 in the case for a dramatic personnel change. Rather than providing co-ordination and leadership, Abbott's office styled itself from day one as a gratuitous conflict machine. Its operation has been characterised by sidelining MPs, lecturing ministers, vetoing trusted adviser selections and the claim that it was uniquely placed to make sound political judgments. The prevailing if heroic assumption running under all this was that the polls would inevitably turn back for the Coalition over time, because Australians would simply not ditch a one-term government – for a quick return to the Labor years. But this was no strategy at all. Rather it was a case of believing one's own press blurb. And it was a conceit comprehensively skewered by Queensland voters on January 31. On the heels of the Australia Day shock, the Queensland election was cataclysmic. Its effect was to awaken Liberals from their compliant torpor towards a new realisation that their collective decline is structural rather than presentational, and that it will not go away. On the heels of the Australia Day shock, the Queensland election was cataclysmic.

Ideally, a prime minister maintains both popularity in the electorate, and high levels of respect in the party room. However, as most prime ministers had to do at various times, (Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, and Julia Gillard) it is possible to survive temporarily with just one of these. Leaders can weather periods of unpopularity, as long as they enjoy the respect of their colleagues. And that confidence in turn derives from a shared sense of purpose, competence, and the existence of a credible plan for recovery. Alternatively – and Kevin Rudd demonstrated this for a sustained period – a hefty lead in the opinion polls provides more than enough cover from internal assailants and accounts for a multitude of sins. Abbott has now lost both. With an approval rating of minus 38 per cent, according to this week's Fairfax-Ipsos poll, the Prime Minister offers his colleagues no credible prospect of becoming popular and therefore no bonus to their own vote. Now his partyroom support is collapsing as well. What authority he is left with is based mainly in the cabinet. In other words, among individuals personally promoted by him, and in the case of several, whose own futures are hog-tied to his. This is hardly convincing. Nor it is durable in the event of a specific challenge. Rudd's demise occurred when his public support was seen to collapse, exposing the deep but largely under appreciated hostility his colleagues felt towards his leadership style. Abbott has never been warmly embraced by voters but did have the backing of his party as a conservative warrior who led them from despair in late 2009 to a dead-heat in 2010 and a thumping win in 2013. But with no honeymoon and a succession of errors, confidence in a recovery has disappeared. The question now is what to do about it.

Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.