Conservative politicians are fundamentalists.  They feel an urge to destroy their own party if there is a risk that progressive ideas will take hold.  We have witnessed this phenomenon in the UK, where the Conservative Party tore itself apart for the best part of a decade over the question of Europe, and in the US, where the moderate 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain had the bizarre Sarah Palin foist upon him by a right wing of the Republican Party.

And now it is Australia’s turn.  Hard-core conservatives led by Nick Minchin, Kevin Andrews (sometimes joined for the ride by the opportunist Tony Abbott), would rather see the Liberal Party suffer an electoral drubbing than for it to be seen to be as leading on the great crisis facing Australia today — climate change.  Malcolm Turnbull’s brave attempt to make the party he leads understand that climate change is important and that the Australian electorate expects its political parties to find solutions and show leadership on the issue is being sabotaged by the destructive gene of ideological intolerance that lies deep within modern conservatism.

Turnbull finds himself in the same position as the last Conservative Prime Minister in the UK, John Major, in 1993 when he described three Eurosceptic members of his own cabinet as “bastards”.  Major’s six-year premiership of the Tories, which ended with an electoral drubbing at the hands of Tony Blair in 1997, was destroyed by the bitter infighting and treachery in his own cabinet and in the party generally over the issue of how close the UK should be to Europe.

Major, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ken Clarke, were realists on the need for the UK to move closer to the EU but for the conservatives this was utterly unacceptable.  Europe to them equaled socialism and compliance with lefty human rights charters.  Even today, with the Tories leading the opinion polls and cruising to an election victory next year, the Eurosceptics are warning party leader David Cameron that if he does not give them what they want within a year of being elected there will be “all out war”.

This sort of blackmailing wrecking tactic was also utilised by the hard right of the Republican Party in the US Presidential election last year.  A combination of religious moralists and climate-change sceptics, the hard right of the Republicans was none too pleased when Arizona senator  McCain became the party’s presidential candidate.  McCain was regarded as “soft” on abortion, stem cell research  and in contrast to the Bush Administration, he was interested in tackling climate change.

McCain wanted as his running mate, the independent moderate senator Joe Lieberman, but once his advisers were point blank told by the hard-core conservative movement that they would not actively support the McCain campaign unless his running mate was one of their own, Palin was rushed into the frame.  Her wacky view of the world had conservatives cheering but it ensured that McCain’s already difficult task in beating Barak Obama was made impossible.

Today Malcolm Turnbull joins John Major and John McCain in becoming the latest victim of the intolerant and spiteful political conservative movement that, like a virus, has infiltrated and strangled the notion of progressive politics and the diversity of ideas in three countries now.