The beggar is an unusual role for a Prime Minister to play but that is what John Howard has been reduced to. Last night on television he well and truly had the begging bowl out.

“There’s a lot of things I want to do for the Australian people”, he told Kerry O’Brien on The 7.30 Report, “and that’s why I would hope that they might be kind enough to re-elect me.”

The real embarrassment – the kind most people get when confronted with a poor wretch asking for money on the street – came from watching the nation’s political leader incapable of giving any evidence of what he actually wanted to do for the Australian people. His plaintive plea for re-election amounts to an assertion that the job needs Howard and, more importantly, that Howard needs the job.

“I won’t find it easy if I am re-elected to retire”, he said. “I won’t find it the least bit easy because I am very committed to this job, and I will not like leaving it.”

Mr Howard did not need to tell anyone that. His actions over the last week showed it. In rejecting the request of his Cabinet colleagues to do the decent thing and retire with as much grace as he could muster, Mr Howard demonstrated that the lure of living at Kirribilli is strong. Which makes you wonder with what sadness he will react if defeat finally comes.

Such a defeat may not be far off and it may yet prove to be at the hands of his parliamentary colleagues rather than the Australian people he has begged to let him stay. The knowledge held by the public that Mr Howard lost the support of his Cabinet must surely affect the standings in the opinion polls. A further increase in the Labor lead in Newspoll next Tuesday will see the pressure to remove him return with a vengeance.

Perhaps the one thing that saved Mr Howard in the party room this week was the absence of someone the Liberals thought would do better. Mr Howard in announcing that if he returned to office he will not serve a full term and anointed his Treasurer Peter Costello as his successor, but Liberals know that the pollsters reckon Mr Costello would do worse than the man who has led them to be so far behind.

Newspoll back in July asked this question: “Thinking now of the leadership of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party and the next federal election to be held later this year. If Mr Peter Costello replaced Mr John Howard as leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister before the next election, would this make you more likely or less likely to vote for the coalition at the next federal election, or would it make no difference in the way you would vote?” The answer was a resounding verdict of “less likely”.

Perhaps Mr Howard will remove the possibility of another attempted coup by visiting the Governor General to call the election before the Newspoll verdict is delivered. More likely he will gamble again that his colleagues do not have the stomach to force a vote against him and will go ahead with the attempt to have an election with two leaders – one for whom the people have lost respect because he no longer can even say what he stands for and another that they have clearly indicated they dislike.

It is a most unusual election strategy.