A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, or so the saying goes. But what of a democratically elected prime minister who wilfully refuses to represent the broad sweep of the people, and particularly those who didn't vote for him?

What chance would you give such a political leader when seeking re-election from those very same people?

This is the signature failing to which the discarded Tony Abbott fails to square up - that his government became a gratuitous conflict machine, gripped by a siege mentality making it narrower and narrower.

So narrow in fact that eventually it was comfortable speaking only to those with whom it already agreed, while eschewing those voters who might be brought across, who might be persuadable if they could see some flexibility and even a modicum of sophisticated argument.

Abbott's choice of media outlets to justify his position and his government's performance says everything. It is a re-run of his time in office and therefore re-run of the same mistakes - an absolute denial of any culpability, and a complete rejection of the logic of voters and his colleagues in their critique of same.

The prime minister who in office spoke predominantly to docile media such as Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, and radio barrackers such as Ray Hadley and Alan Jones, has become the disgruntled reject - dumped by his own colleagues against whose collective judgments he now rails.

Still clueless as to what went wrong, Abbott now uses the above outlets exclusively to undertake the sniping and wrecking he initially forswore. Determined not to yield, he says the Turnbull government has not changed at all, yet everyone else knows it has.

The decline of Abbott's political viability speaks to the futility and obvious short-sightedness of his "friends only" strategy. Indeed, these uncritical barrackers did him no favours in the end.

Abbott, who started out with a massive 35-seat buffer and the tail-wind of powerful media organisations, still managed to go backwards in the polls, and backwards inside his own party room.

The tactical genius behind this strategy stands condemned - not by other media, or even voters - although they were lining up with baseball bats for their opportunity - but by Liberals MPs.

In politics you can govern for a time without majority support in the electorate, or perhaps without the slavish affections of your own party room, but Abbott's outward approach, coupled with his office's internal alienation, somehow managed to align both. That is deadly, especially so when the poll deficit looks permanent.

His assertion that he could have done a David Cameron and be re-elected, despite a period of being down in the polls, is fanciful and speaks to the depths of his office's self-delusion. Cameron is a moderate, modern, inclusivist conservative relaxed about marriage equality and invested personally in tough action on climate change. Thus he is the antithesis of Abbott - far closer in fact to Turnbull and the "sensible centre" to which Abbott merely paid lip-service.

But then, none so blind as those who will not see.

Tony Abbott's Ray Hadley interview shows exactly why he's no longer prime minister