In August, Nationals MPs headed to the Mid-North Coast of NSW to try to chart a path forward after the shattering election loss to Labor.

The Port Macquarie love-in was supposed to be an all-day event. Barnaby Joyce was there, one of his colleagues recalls, for barely an hour before skipping out.

His drift away from the party that made his career may have accelerated since the election, but it’s been in train for years.

In the previous term, Peter Dutton told Joyce to retire after he was filmed drunk on a Canberra footpath . Two of Joyce’s Nationals allies retired, killing off any chance of toppling leader David Littleproud. Joyce felt like yesterday’s man. A “discordant note”, as he said in his statement on Saturday, adding “that is not who I want to be”.

Littleproud said before the

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