Sitting at the front bar of Molly Malone’s Irish pub in Devonport, Tasmania, Scott Morrison is at ease. He is talking to Mac Jago, a worker at Cement Australia, one of the north-west’s big employers. The pair sink a couple of Boag’s ales, and make small talk.

“We had a pretty decent chat, normal stuff, as you do,” Jago tells Guardian Australia. “Footy, my girlfriend, his missus. He seemed like not a bad bloke.”

Morrison is on the offensive, campaigning in the Labor-held seat of Braddon, one of a clutch of marginal seats the government hopes it can wrest back at the 18 May election.

It is a sign of his confidence, or at least his belief, that the Coalition can cling on to government.

A few months ago, the prospect of the Coalition hanging on to power seemed an absurdity, but now strategists on both sides are gearing up for a fierce contest. However, it’s still early days in the campaign.

Ultimate compromise candidate

Morrison’s first order of business once he assumed the role of leader last August was to patch up a bruised and battered party.

Leadership tensions have plagued the Liberals for a decade as the party swung from moderate Malcolm Turnbull to conservative Tony Abbott and back again, running the gamut of the Liberals’ extreme left and right flanks.

Morrison managed to emerge through the centre of the party as the ultimate compromise candidate – moderate MPs joined Morrison’s centre-right faction to block conservative warrior Peter Dutton from taking the role.

“The good thing about Scott is he is able to walk through the middle,” one MP who supported Dutton says. “We needed someone to heal our party and he could do that. He studied at the altar of John Howard and he understands he has got to lead the team and he has got to inspire.”

Morrison’s capacity to work across the factional divide has allowed him to steady the ship. Immediately after the leadership change, the polls showed Labor had consolidated its position, ahead 56%-44% two-party-preferred. It appeared unassailable. Morale among Coalition MPs was at rock bottom.

Even Scott Morrison’s detractors within the party – from both the Dutton and Turnbull camps – acknowledge that he is doing well to connect with middle Australians. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Colleagues are reluctant to put their name to either praise or criticism of Morrison during the election campaign, but one Liberal called his work since taking over as leader “miraculous”.

“The party was in rack and ruin and he has had to put it back together with his bare hands.

“People are quite surprised to believe that the ship might float again. People can just form a victory narrative – just – it is just enough to believe in it.”

Others say the Liberal party is more united than it has been since John Howard’s days, playing down the backlash from voters about the coup culture that has gripped Canberra for more than a decade.

“I honestly believe that we are in a much better position as a result of the change of leadership, because of who Morrison is, how he relates to people.”

As a creature of the NSW Liberal party – he was state director from 2000 to 2004 – Morrison’s political career has been forged in the fire of factional warfare.

The manner of his preselection for the seat of Cook still stokes fury within the party’s conservative wing, more than a decade on, after its candidate Michael Towke was brutally knocked off following a series of damaging stories in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, despite initially winning by 82 votes to eight.

Party figures remember when an “indexed shit file” on Towke, prepared by Labor’s Sam Dastyari, was wheeled into a meeting of the state executive on a removalist trolley.

Dastyari has revealed that he handed over the material to “Morrison’s factional lieutenants” at the Golden Century Chinese restaurant on Sussex Street in Sydney.

“I would never underestimate Scott Morrison because I would never underestimate a guy who would turn to one of his political opponents to take out one of his own ... a guy who will do that will do anything,” Dastyari told Sydney radio last year.

The factional dealing in the NSW branch of the party has made enemies for Morrison’s centre-right faction, and particularly his close ally Alex Hawke. One party figure derides them as the “rent by the hour” faction, because they will do deals with anyone.

But the middle way has proved successful for Morrison.

The centre right is a small faction, but has been able to position itself as the fulcrum of power, switching as needed from the left to the right and vice-versa to yield results. That dynamic was at play to install Morrison as leader, with six crucial votes – MPs Lucy Wicks, Stuart Robert, Ben Morton, Hawke, Steve Irons and Bert van Manen – ultimately deciding the leadership.

“Scott Morrison is one of the few people who could follow you into a revolving door and come out first,” one senior NSW Liberal moderate says.

“He is a master of the middle and he has the capacity to do these crab-like pincer movements to shimmy his way into the right place at the right time. It is quite impressive.”

Morrison emerged victorious last August after conservatives in the party put the wheels in motion to end Turnbull’s leadership. Once the moderates realised Turnbull’s time was up, they worked assiduously with Morrison’s faction to cruel any chance of a Dutton victory.

But it was the shrewd operators of Morrison’s faction, led by Hawke, who sealed Turnbull’s fate by bringing on the leadership spill in the first place.

Loyalists to Morrison dismiss suggestions that this was a calculated Morrison-for-PM project, saying that in a contest between Turnbull and Dutton, some of his people preferred Dutton – no big deal.

Scott Morrison with Malcolm Turnbull, whom he embraced as “my leader” amid the leadership crisis. Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

But after the judgment had been made to remove Turnbull – whom Morrison embraced as “my leader” amid the crisis – the machinations allowed Morrison to take the top job without the baggage of being the instigator.

Some conservatives in the party outflanked by Morrison remain livid at what they see as the prime minister’s double dealing, claiming he had been positioning himself “for years” for the job.

“He has tried to give the impression this all fell into his lap, but that is crap,” one senior conservative MP says. “Anyone who knows anything about what happened knows that is not the case. This was careful, it was planned, it was clinical.”

A natural politician?

Morrison understands intimately factional power play. When state director, he took the unusual step of appointing two deputies – the head of the right and the head of the left faction.

His supporters say this is a sign of his political nous.

“A leader must understand that you can’t have victory for one side – victory for one side means defeat for the party – Scott knows that in his bones,” one MP says.

But this willingness to do deals, to compromise, has also made Morrison appear something of a political chameleon; someone notoriously hard to pin down.

The right highlights his position on same-sex marriage to make this point. While Morrison is an evangelical Christian and opposed to same-sex marriage, he chose to work on protecting religious freedoms in the enabling legislation rather than “getting out there and fighting it”.

“He knew that if he became a warrior in the marriage case it would cruel his chances of attracting left votes. So what is Scott Morrison prepared to compromise for? He is prepared to compromise for political ambition.”

Others are even harsher, saying Morrison is ambitious, aggressive and intemperate, and hasmanoeuvred himself into the top job by getting Hawke and others to do his dirty work.

“He is the be-all, end-all know it all.”

His supporters dismiss the criticism, saying some colleagues dislike him because he doesn’t buy into “internal factional political crap.”

“They [conservatives] dislike him because he has been a loyal servant of the party who has never put an internal factional fight above the best interests of the party as a whole and the nation,” one MP says.

“He is centrist, he is a mainstream Liberal, and he cares about the values that he has articulated in this campaign. He is not a warrior, he is not a spear carrier.”

Many see Morrison as a natural politician. He is a hard worker and has successfully tackled substantial areas of reform: he was the architect of the controversial Operation Sovereign Borders policy, and has made significant changes in thornier policy areas such as welfare reform, the GST and superannuation.

But his critics find him smug and arrogant.

“I think when he is in full flight and he knows what’s best, he can be very abrasive – how he handles that could probably improve,” one MP says.

Scott Morrison’s willingness to do deals, to compromise, has sometimes made him appear as something of a political chameleon. Photograph: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Morrison may have mastered the middle of his party and tamed internal dissent, but is he the right man to win back middle Australia, the fabled Howard battlers?

Soon after becoming leader, Morrison told the party room he had been chosen to lead, and he expected MPs to follow him.

The election campaign has begun with Morrison closing in on Bill Shorten and unsettling the Labor leader, who still remains the firm favourite to win next month’s poll.

In the first week of the campaign, Morrison has proved himself to be a formidable contender, and even his detractors within the party – from the Dutton and Turnbull camps – acknowledge he is doing well to connect with middle Australians.

With tax cuts to sell and Labor’s sweeping policy platform to target, Morrison is needling Labor strategists, who know they are up against a wily operator.

There has been a shift in the dynamic – Labor and Shorten have come under pressure for the first time in a long time.

“Scott has wrong-footed Bill more times than I have had hot breakfasts in the past six months,” one MP says.

“He is agile, and he can see around corners and he gets the politics of everything.”

But MPs, however hopeful, need the polls to tighten further before getting too carried away. It is a long road ahead. The Coalition starts from behind. It needs to win seats to maintain the status quo and is dealing with spot fires in seats such as Wentworth, Warringah, Kooyong and Farrer that will divert resources needed in marginal seats.

Unlike in 2016, Morrison is helped by the weight of expectations resting firmly on Labor. Scrutiny is focused on the government in waiting, rather than the current government, which has shed itself of the unpopular corporate tax cut policy it took to the last election. But this is still Shorten’s election to lose.

‘A bit of an inbetweener’

Morrison’s pitch to middle Australia is centred on his own suburban Australian story.

He speaks fondly of his childhood in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where his parents, John and Marion, ran the Boys and Girls Brigade at the local church. His father was a policeman and mayor of Waverley Council, exposing Morrison to politics from a young age.

Morrison won a place at the academically selective Sydney Boys high school, where he had a close-knit group of friends that he still socialises with more than 30 years later.

A trawl of his old school yearbooks shows he was into sport and music. In his second year at the school in 1982, he was cast as the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver! The role of a skilful and cunning pickpocket was relished by the eager young Morrison, who also played the saxophone in the school concert band and orchestra.

His musical interests soon gave way to sport, with Morrison progressing steadily up the ranks to be in the school’s rowing 1st VIII and rugby 1st XV by year 12.

As a 15-year-old, he was affectionately teased as “ciggies” because of his skinny legs. His rowing mates wrote one year that he was a “rabble-rousing schizophrenic” with a “sound style and a nice singlet”.

When profiling himself as the captain of his year 10 rowing four, Morrison said he was “known for his psyche-up sessions and aggravating coaching suggestions. He was “the brains of the crew, plotting the race strategies”.

A rugby teammate from the time, Christian Rabatsch, says Morrison was “a bit of an inbetweener” at school. Academically solid, but not a standout.

“There were some people in our year who stood out and you thought, “they have got something special”, but that wasn’t him,” Rabatsch tells Guardian Australia.

Scott Morrison and his wife, Jenny, at Good Friday services at St Charbel’s Catholic Maronite Church at Punchbowl in Sydney. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

“You get some kids who have got a strong personality, who were really out there, you knew they were in the room – I wouldn’t say Scott was like that. He just put his head down and worked hard … he floated under the radar and just did his thing.”

Scott Mason, a good schoolmate of Morrison’s, says he was a “popular, fun, and funny” teenager, who became more serious once he met his wife-to-be, Jenny, while still at school.

But he says no one would have expected him to become prime minister. He wasn’t on the debating team, he wasn’t interested in studying politics or law. “We were all amazed where he ended up,” Mason says.

When they catch up as adults, politics is not on the agenda. “He doesn’t want to talk about it, we are a reminder of his fun teenage youth, he much prefers to talk to us about what we are doing, our families, that sort of stuff.”

Morrison lists his family and faith as the most significant influences on his life.

He is a Pentecostal Christian and has credited senior Hillsong pastors as being among his most important mentors. But he is private about his faith, telling parliament in his first speech: “My personal faith in Jesus Christ is not a political agenda.”

His instincts on this are again political – he knows that Australians don’t like people forcing their religious views on others.

“Super normal”, is how one MP describes Morrison. His home life in Sydney’s shire is like something out of Australia’s first reality TV series, Sylvania Waters.

“It is blokes sitting around drinking beer and talking about footy. That is what he loves.”

Peter Verwer, a former head of the Property Council who was a mentor of Morrison’s before he entered politics, says the prime minister has “continued as he began” after he made the transition from the corporate sector to politics.

“His great virtue is his no-fuss approach and he was very quick to grasp all the dimensions of an issue. I think he is a very rare individual, he is good at both strategy and tactics; he sees the long arc of an issue, but is willing to calibrate those views in order to deal with the reality of circumstances.

“He instinctively understands the aspirations of middle Australians, because he is one of them. There is no need to play it as a game – this is his nature.”

After becoming leader, Morrison told the party room he had always been a fan of rowing. His favourite bit of the race was the final 500 metres.

His old rowing buddy, Mason, says Morrison will want to make sure he leaves “no question unanswered” in the final run-up to 18 May.

“The last 500 metres is the sprint to the finish, it is when you leave nothing on the table. You want to finish with nothing left in the tank – you completely drain yourself and you have nothing left at the finish.”