A group of anonymous senior Liberal Party officials has gone to town on Scott Morrison following his staggering election loss.
More than a dozen Liberal staffers and senior MPs spoke to The Saturday Paper, claiming that the former Prime Minister's self-perceived 'genius' is to blame for the bungled election campaign.
One Liberal MP had a very specific putdown for Mr Morrison.
"He f**cked us and his fingerprints are absolutely f**kin’ everywhere on that," they said.
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"The bloke thinks he is a master strategist. He is a f**kwit."
The sources added: "Morrison believed his infallibility until the very end. His office enabled it, they briefed it and they injected it into the campaign at every opportunity."
The group of Liberals also put the ex-PM on blast over his defence for an MP accused of being transphobic in the final weeks of the election campaign.
"We spent a full f**king week being transphobes in Parliament and then we spent weeks during the campaign doing the exact same thing, and it was f**king insane," an MP said.
"The transphobe thing was an absolute disaster."
Another source described the Liberal Party as 'kneecapped' by Morrison's decision to endorse Katherine Deves for the seat of Warringah despite her rampant, unapologetic transphobic comments.
One source said moderate Liberal MPs were 'totally kneecapped' by the decision to install Deves.
"[They were] barely able to do any media at all because that’s all they were going to be asked about," the Liberal staffer revealed.
Morrison’s broadly-panned, last-minute housing policy was also slammed.
“The super-for-housing policy was a good one but they dropped it late, in the last week of the campaign, because Morrison was terrified of a multimillion [dollar] TV campaign from the super funds,” one Liberal MP said.
But when it came down to it, Morrison was delusional in his popularity with the Australian people and in his own electorate, one senior Liberal said.
"Where [polling and statistics] once confirmed Morrison’s self-belief, this was different," they said.
"I don’t think he was capable of truly adapting to the tracking. In fact, I don’t think he believed it was correct. Everything else was wrong and he was right.”
The anonymous Liberal said that the biggest issue was the fact that Morrison was unpopular with not only his own electorate but the wider Australian population.
"I think it took people three years to realise what a horrible person he is," they said.
Rachel Lang