The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, appears to have gone missing.

Yes, I made that claim once before. But this time I don’t mean it metaphorically. I mean it literally. The PM has literally disappeared from view.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw Malcolm tweet a selfie from public transport? Let me save you the effort of trying to remember. I looked it up: 2 July. You remember 2 July – it was election day. The prime minister took a train to Penrith to hawk for votes for Fiona Scott in seat of Lindsay.

That didn’t go so well.

In the four weeks since he and his cabinet were sworn in, Turnbull has done very little to reassure voters that they made the right choice in returning the Coalition to power.

He has, in fact, done very little to set the national agenda at all. Think of all the major policy discussions of the past few weeks: a banking royal commission; reports of abuse of asylum seekers on Nauru; the plebiscite on same sex marriage; repealing section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act; amending the constitution to recognise Indigenous people; and GST reform. Not one of these discussions is being proactively led by the Turnbull government.

The only proactive steps the Turnbull government has taken since being returned to power is to mess up the census, and to mess up the government’s response to the messing up of the census. Also, there was the messing up of the decision to not endorse Kevin Rudd for UN secretary general (the process, not the outcome). And then there was the messing up of appointing a royal commissioner in the Northern Territory. Also, don’t forget the messing up of the Baird government’s sale of Ausgrid.

You get my point. It’s been messy.

Has Turnbull gone into hiding? Is he sulking? Depressed? Is he working hard behind closed doors on a new economic narrative? Or, is he, like many of us, just watching the Olympics and planning to get serious about work again after the closing ceremony?

One man offering a reassuring presence these days is Tony Abbott. Mind you, at this stage he’s mainly reassuring his Liberal colleagues that he’s still available, if needed, to lead. Abbott’s speech at the Samuel Griffith Society last week demonstrated key markers that he’d have to display to make a comeback viable: self-reflection and a capacity to learn from mistakes; considered policy reflection and the beginning of an economic narrative; and an uncowering stance in the media glare.

As Karl Marx said, history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.

For those who think it’s inconceivable that Abbott could become prime minister again, may I remind you of Kevin Rudd? For those who say, yes, but Rudd was always popular with voters, and Abbott never was, I say, yes, but that’s not the point. It isn’t about whether Abbott was popular with voters back then, or is popular with them now: it is about whether Malcolm Turnbull can ever be popular again – with voters, or with his own colleagues.

Ideally, a leader enjoys the support of caucus colleagues and the voters. Some, like Julia Gillard, get by with just the former. Others, like Kevin Rudd, seize office relying on the latter. Turnbull is losing in both groups, and without the support of the electorate or his party room, he can’t survive.

It’s not difficult to imagine the pitch for Abbott 2.0 to disgruntled Liberal MPs: Tony won the election in 2013 convincingly, while Malcolm holds the slimmest of majorities. Tony never got his chance to contest as prime minister: that was stolen from him. Tony will campaign hard on border protection and union corruption. Tony would never have brought in these superannuation changes, and he will get rid of them. Yes, Tony made mistakes in the 2014 budget, but he tried to do a lot more for budget repair than just repeating “jobs and growth”. Tony’s learned from the 2014 budget. Also, Tony stopped the boats. He repealed the carbon tax. Tony didn’t waffle on about the most exciting time to be alive. Tony got stuff done.

As Karl Marx said, history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.

Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Abbott-Turnbull-Abbott. It’s a continuum of tragedy to farce.

Marx made another observation, and frankly, I could not craft a more apt description of Malcolm Turnbull’s current predicament:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.

From the exciting overthrow of Tony Abbott last September to the limp across the electoral line last month, the Turnbull revolution has perfectly traversed this Marxian landscape. The “adult conversations with the nation” shrunk to three-word slogans. “Reclaiming the economic narrative” collapsed into one idea: the hoary old chestnut of conservative economic policy, a business tax cut. The passion for marriage equality disappeared into a plebiscite.

Turnbull can still make his own history, but only if he is willing to throw off the spirits of the past.

Or, to put it less elegantly than Marx did, Malcolm needs to go for broke.

Marriage equality and superannuation would be a good place to start. Turnbull needs to make a play for the electorate and stare down his party room: it’s the only way to ensure his survival long-term. Going for broke – a real Turnbull revolution – carries the risk that, instead of succeeding, Turnbull’s prime ministership dies fast. But at least Turnbull would die on his feet. At least he’d make his own history.

Otherwise, Malcolm’s prime ministership is destined to die slowly. He can’t go about wearing Tony Abbott’s costumes, or using Tony Abbott’s slogans. That approach nearly lost the 2016 election, and it only ends one way: perhaps it will take six months, a year, but eventually Turnbull’s caucus colleagues will realise that if they are going to run an Abbott-esque government, they may as well resurrect Tony Abbott.

For ever so long as Malcolm Turnbull stays missing from view, it seems likely that history will repeat itself. It’s time for the PM to get back on the train, and get back to work.

Otherwise, let the farce begin.