Sorry Tony, but the only person you have to blame for being booted out of office is yourself

‘Few prime ministers have been given the job with such enthusiasm, and then proceeded to dissipate that support so quickly,’ writes Malcolm Farr Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The excuses tumbled over each other as our former prime minister, Tony Abbott, gave his analysis of the failures of conservative governments including, of course, his own. Saboteurs were out to get him, not least such forces as the “tyranny of officialdom”, as the headline on an Abbott blame-shedding article put it in Monday’s The Australian.

But democratically elected members of parliament also done him in, including fellow Liberals.