Abbott likely gone by Fri - Bob Ellis reiterates

He's not saying for 100% definite, but he's calling it "extremely likely" that Abbott will be replaced by Friday.

First he indicates just how much shit the gov is in over this budget in the senate. This is his take on it:

He has got the deficit levy through, enraging his party’s backers; he will drive, by killing off their languages, a few dozen more First Australians to suicide; and he will get, probably, the reward-for-pregnant millionaires bonanza through, enraging eight million lesser, older women — but everywhere else he looks is a valley of dry bones. 

The new HECS arrangements will not get through — for the dead or the living. 

The GP co-payment will fail and 50 per cent of the Liberal vote in the over-fifties go to Palmer or Labor. 

The cuts to the ABC will not get through, nor the cuts to the CSIRO, which is curing cancer already. 

The $80 billion gone from health and education, already toxic, will lose the Liberals government in Victoria, Queensland and, maybe, just maybe, New South Wales. 

He will have to explain why his bottom line is $20 billion sandwiches short of a picnic — yet is not serious enough to have a double dissolution over. more

 I should add to that the polls from bludgertrack:

The picture is clear. The Lieberals are going down in flames. A spectacular disintegration I might add. They simply have to act. Abbott is now political poison.  And I'm sure many will be salivating watching the spectacle unfold. I've no doubt the internet will move in for the justified kill, raising Abbott's political head in triumph.

And finally Ellis's prediction. At the very least it shows the leadership rumblings have well and truly started:    

Abbott has 1.5 million votes less than he won with in September and it is unlikely he will get any more than two or three hundred of them back. It is more likely he will lose ten thousand more. This means his own seat will go, Hockey’s, Morrison’s, Dutton’s, Pyne’s, Julie Bishop’s, Malcolm Turnbull’s and 40 others, and Philip Ruddock be the only significant Liberal left standing after the cataclysm that will come if Abbott is not replaced in the next few days or, at worst, by September. 

And I am not betting money on it and I might be wrong, but I think it’s extremely likely he will be gone by Friday, with his successor – Dutton, perhaps – sacking Joe by Monday week. more