Coalition turmoil has handed Anthony Albanese political space few prime ministers enjoy. Whether he uses it to govern with purpose – or continues to drift – is now the central question.

The Coalition leadership changes and tumults have given Anthony Albanese a potential boon that few of his predecessors, Labor or Liberal have ever enjoyed. Over the next six months voters will reassess him from scratch. That’s primarily because he is now facing, in Angus Taylor, an opponent from nowhere desperately trying to invent a persona that does not much fit the character he has, and a party likewise trying to squeeze itself into an ever-narrowing space.

Albanese’s character and reputation have been largely based so far on his performance against Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley, each, in his or her own way, part of a Coalition history that the current leadership team would like voters to forget.

Strictly, Angus Taylor, a senior frontbencher and recognised future leader for each of these former leaders, ought to be seen as a part of that history, but he has left few fingerprints for many to remember. His policy contribution was minor, and unmemorable, even when he was minister for energy, shadow treasurer or minister for defence. He has left no legacies, other than slapstick presentational blunders, poor skills at prevarication and evidence of abiding vanity.

He is said to be a philosophical leader of his tribe – and on that account alone a person of greater potential for his party than the hapless Sussan Ley. No speech he has made in parliament has ever galvanised or shifted a debate over policy or programs. No insight has changed the way others, even his supporters, see the status quo. Few of his colleagues, and even fewer among the public could remember an original idea for which he has argued, a memorable phrase he has used in debate, or a perfectly characteristic ideal, purpose or end for which he could be said to stand and do no other. He is perhaps the marketer’s dream: the blank canvas to be presented as having an attractive but confected and entirely plastic persona.

He cannot succeed with that. In short order his first task is to introduce himself to voters, and to explain what the Coalition he now leads now stands for. He must invent for himself a past and sell the idea that he has long been on a crusade to benefit his nation, its population and his side of politics around policies and programs that are in their best interests. Although he can hardly ignore the scale of popular rejection that the last election, and the latest opinion polls show, he must demonstrate why the decline is now over and the revival starts now. He must do that while facing derision from the Labor Party and the contempt of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, who claims that he has tried to steal policies closely associated with her, and that he lacks the ability and courage to carry them out. On the evidence, many disillusioned former Coalition voters suspect she is right.

But Angus Taylor is not the only leader that voters will be looking at anew. Anthony Albanese may have been in politics for a long time. He may have been prime minister for longer than any of........

© Pearls and Irritations