Well, WA Liberal head, Troy Buswell, has stared down the leadership spill and will continue to lead the party. I predicted below that he is finished politically, and despite surviving so far I just can't see it continuing.

Buswell is now seen as a joke. Maybe that's unfair - I don't know - but as we all know it is perceptions that count in politics, and the media's view of Buswell has now ordained him as a walking joke. Everything he says and does will be interpreted from that angle. And the local Perth paper, the West Australian, has turned on Buswell after earlier supporting him when he first got the job.

One of the most interesting aspects of this whole tale is that is not the ALP or even the press that have done Buswell in: it's leaks from his own party, as the Piping Shrike observes and this news item confirms. The next set of opinion polls in WA should finish Buswell off. He literally is dead man walking.

For pollie junkies this far removed there is a sort of macabre pleasure in watching it all unfold. Like a Greek tragedy.

UPDATE: Carpenter hints at an early election. The Libs better make the change quickly!!