Do you really think the Abbott government was trying to double-cross Clive Palmer and allowing big business to keep the windfall gains from the abolition of the carbon tax? Hardly. No, the minute they found out about the problem Tony Abbott’s Senate team rushed to and fro bending over backwards to accommodate PUP’s changing demands. But it was all too late. The big man corralling his small group of senators achieved the notoriety and power he desperately desires. It’s difficult to imagine how things could have worked out better for Palmer. It’s almost as if he planned it this way; although that could not be the case, could it? The legislation was reintroduced on Monday after Tony Abbott had a long, slow weekend in which to mull over Palmer’s newly critical role in the civic life of this nation.

The problem for Abbott is that politics is a zero-sum game: if one side’s winning, someone else is losing. As prime minister he has the advantage of incumbency. The PM gets to set the agenda and benefits from the trappings of office but somehow Abbott appears completely unable to harness the benefits that should accrue from his position. It almost seems as if someone needs to reside in the Lodge (which Abbott’s not – it’s being refurbished) in order to fully inherit the mantle of leadership. The problem is there haven’t been many victories for this government since it took office and this isn’t good at this point in its first term. It’s also definitely not positive for Abbott personally, because even his own side is beginning to wonder why things continue going so wrong.

Tony Abbott, aided and abetted by an utterly dysfunctional personal office, has wandered way off the beaten track.

Even something as unexceptionable as welcoming the prime minister of our second-biggest trading partner last week turned into a disaster. Salvaging defeat out of a simple photo opportunity takes some real talent. It’s not the sort of thing you can fluke. Yet the speech in which Abbott described war criminals as honourable (lumping all Japanese soldiers in together) is indicative of someone floating in a bubble, detached from reality and the voters. That nobody close to him picked up such an obvious solecism before he blundered into uttering the gaffe suggests the problem resides deeper. This was not an accident, a rare stumble on a well-trodden path. Abbott, aided and abetted by an utterly dysfunctional personal office, has wandered way off the beaten track. He is trying to mark out his own trail forward, and he’s being encouraged in this mission by those around him, including, most notably, his strident chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, who won’t hear a defeatist word uttered in her presence. But there’s no sign of the promised land ahead and the leader is increasingly looking as if he’s wandering around in circles and losing touch with the broader tribe, the people he’s meant to speak for and represent. This is, most emphatically, not a good look.

After six years of infighting and vindictiveness, Labor had set the leadership bar pretty low. Nevertheless, it’s still a hurdle that Abbott does not appear able to clear. In opposition he very successfully played sectional interests off against one another but this is not a trick for government. The PM’s role is to unite the country, create a vision of the future and show how they will navigate us to this green and pleasant land. This is not happening and this is the root cause of the problem because, as Palmer demonstrated last week, there is always someone else out there ready to upstage you.