News of the approaches to Ms Bishop and Mr Turnbull comes after Fairfax Media revealed on Friday Mr Abbott approached The Australian newspaper's foreign editor Greg Sheridan – who has described the Prime Minister as his "best friend" in university days – take up the plum role of high commissioner to Singapore after the 2013 election. One cabinet minister labelled the offer "completely bizarre" and expressed shock the newspaper's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell – a friend of Mr Abbott – confirmed to Fairfax that he had dissuaded Mr Sheridan from moving. Mr Mitchell said: "Obviously Greg and I are personal friends, as are Greg and Tony, so I guess the offer was probably quite attractive but he has a pretty good job at the Oz too". Mr Abbott stunned his party room on Monday and drew fierce criticism from his own backbench for knighting Queen Elizabeth's husband, Prince Philip. As despair in Liberal ranks grows, Ms Bishop has told backbenchers that Mr Abbott has to be given the opportunity to recover and has told at least one backbencher the Prime Minister's National Press Club speech on Monday was his chance to present a "compelling narrative" for the government and to begin to recover.

Mr Turnbull has told colleagues that when he decided in 2010 to remain in Parliament he made a serious undertaking not to damage Mr Abbott, the man who tore him down as leader, in any way. He has remained firm in that decision, his colleagues said. Like Ms Bishop, Mr Turnbull has told his colleagues that the party needs Mr Abbott to "reboot" and to succeed but the backbench is not assuaged, with some angry at this restraint. Spokesmen for Ms Bishop and Mr Turnbull declined to comment when asked by Fairfax Media if the ministers had been approached by backbench MPs.

One cabinet minister, who asked not to be named, said that Mr Abbott was in "very serious trouble, there is no doubt" but that a majority of cabinet ministers remained loyal.

"His problem is that Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop can see they could be prime minister without going to an election. The danger is if they can work out what the order will be," the cabinet minister said. "I can't see why Julie would stay deputy again, but then again why would Malcolm agree to be deputy?" A second cabinet minister put it this way: "Changing leaders doesn't solve problems. If we change leader now, the new leader would face all the same problems. Then we'd replace them in 12 months. Then we'd certainly lose re-election." A junior minister, however, put the counterview: "Rudd was a well-liked national leader. People were shocked because they woke up one day to find that he was gone, without explanation. Nobody would call Tony Abbott a beloved national figure. No one would be surprised if we got rid of him." And a fourth Coalition MP warned backbench anger could ignite in the event of a worse-than-expected result in the Queensland state election and even suggested a backbench "suicide bomber" could emerge to challenge Mr Abbott, in the same way the Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, challenged Mr Turnbull in 2009 despite having little chance of winning.

"There are people thinking about it, though they are not that credible," the MP said. "In the Liberal Party people trade on competence, not popularity like Labor. He [Abbott] had respect, he had competence and he has lost both. And it's not going to be a popularity-led recovery." On Friday, Mr Abbott declared he would "absolutely" lead the Coalition to the next election and brushed aside questions about Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop's lead over him in opinion polling. "I'm really thrilled I've got strong colleagues ... one of the reasons why so many members of the team are able to perform so well is because they have got a very good captain. It takes a good captain to help all the players of a team to excel," he said. Follow James Massola on Facebook.