Victoria’s Liberal leader is counting the days to the election. But will ‘brand Brad’ pass the pub test?

Brad Battin rejects that he’s a conservative … ‘I feel like left and right is just irrelevant.’ Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

It’s 2.30pm on a Wednesday in Melbourne’s CBD and Victoria’s opposition leader, Brad Battin, is nursing a Guinness in a corner booth of the Elephant and Wheelbarrow.

“Should I split the G?” he says, referring to the pub game of drinking down to the horizontal line in the Guinness logo.