With this week's Newspoll recording the Coalition's lowest ever primary support at just 24 per cent, and Sussan Ley's net approval at minus 33 per cent, political drama is in the air.

Canberra's "killing season" approaches. That time when opposition MPs slouch dejectedly through the final parliamentary days of the year and conspire in corridors and over restaurant tables about what to do.

Over the years, this closing window for a spill has overwhelmed leaders on both sides - Kim Beazley in 2006, as Labor MPs fretted about a potential fifth straight loss to John Howard, and Malcolm Turnbull in 2009, defenestrated by a climate-sceptical Tony Abbott.

A common theme is a leader trying to connect with the middle mass of Australian voters, only to be replaced by a muscular foe promising to sh

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