UNLIKE a toaster, trading in your prime minister is not free of consequences.

For the Liberal Party, tossing out Tony Abbott would be a disastrous breach of trust with the electorate; an ­admission of catastrophic failure where none exists.

It would vindicate the disastrous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era, and destroy the Liberals’ reputational ­advantage over Labor.

It would cement the destructive idea that all political parties are run like oligarchies by people you wouldn’t invite into your home.

And it could wreck the chances of a good Baird government romping home on March 28.

Just three weeks after ­Abbott conclusively defeated the last attempted coup, the ongoing instability and poor sportsmanship of the plotters is lethal to the Liberal brand.

The “political bed-wetters” agitating for change pretend the transition from Abbott will be seamless because: a) the electorate won’t be surprised as his failings have been well-ventilated; and b) he is of good character and will not sabotage his successor.

But it is wrong to assume voters will accept a democratically elected PM being cut down in his first term.

The first question voters will ask is why? What has ­Abbott done wrong that such a drastic step is required?

All we really have is Prince Philip’s gong.

Less easy to ­explain are ill-judged Budget policy formulation and complaints to do with the way he runs his office.

These are serious problems but don’t justify removing him from office.

It’s the party’s job to better manage its leader.

But jettisoning the PM is the job of voters, no matter how often politicians say the job is the “gift” of the party.

Of course we know we’re voting for our local MP at election time but people are not so stupid that they don’t also know they are voting by proxy for the PM, whose picture is plastered on how-to-vote cards and all over polling places.

It is sophistry for a political party to pretend it can chop and change PMs without reference to voters.

It can, but it will be punished. One consequence is that any new prime minister would be obliged to go to an early election in order to achieve legitimacy.

“We’ve seen that immediately after Kevin Rudd was stabbed by Julia Gillard there was enormous pressure on (her) to go to the polls,” Treasurer Joe Hockey tells me in an interview to be aired on 2GB tonight.

“Because it’s not a fixed-term parliament like NSW or Victoria there’s ­nothing to stop you going to the polls so there’d be unstoppable pressure in that regard ... even though, rightly, our party chooses the leader and deputy leader it is the nation that chooses its prime minister and it’s the nation that wants to have a say in who is the prime minister.”

The government’s troubles began with the last budget and may ease with the next budget in May.

media_camera Prime Minister Tony Abbott faced questions about his leadership while visiting New Zealand yesterday.

That may explain the urgency of the plotters pushing for a denouement this week, spooked by a glimmer of a turnaround in the polls after an intently focused PM tried reconnecting with his base on counter-terrorism, welfare and border security.

The criticism he is copping now is as ferocious as before last month’s unsuccessful spill motion, but it is completely different. It now comes from the opportunistic anti-Abbott Left. The rest have looked at the alternatives and quietly recoiled.

Hockey admits the 2014 Budget may have been “too ambitious … sometimes when a doctor sees a patient who is quite ill they can overprescribe or go to extremes to try to ­relieve the pain and ensure it doesn’t get worse,” he says.

“Maybe we did that in the Budget. Maybe we moved too quickly in too many areas but we did so because it’s the right thing for the country.”

type_quote_start “Jettisoning the PM is the job of voters, no matter how often politicians say the job is the ‘gift’ of the party.” type_quote_end

Hockey maintains that the intergenerational report to be released this week will justify the tilt at structural reform.

“It will show the trajectory we were on before the last ­budget, the trajectory we’re on now, and what we could have been on if we had got everything through in the Budget. People will be ­shocked,” he said.

“We’ve come a very long way ... but there is still more work to be done if we want to fully afford our future.”

In NZ this week Abbott told of economic growth that has grown from 1.9 per cent to 2.7 per cent in a year, of export volumes up 7 per cent, housing approvals up 9 per cent, and new business registrations at an “all-time record high”.

His innate humility and self-restraint mean he doesn’t blow his trumpet enough.

Equally, his stubborn loyalty to his besieged treasurer and chief of staff seems suicidal.

But as he stoically endures attacks from friend and foe, and fights valiantly for ­redemption, a grudging appreciation of his strength of character may emerge.

A political leader unwilling to dump loyal liabilities to save himself is frustratingly unpragmatic, but uncommonly admirable.

So, if Abbott’s colleagues allow him to survive to the next election, he will have achieved a miraculous resetting of politics, back from cynicism to virtue.