Exasperated by partisan infighting, Malcolm Turnbull hit out last week at the “anonymous smart arses” trying to undermine his role as leader of Australia’s opposition coalition.

Mr Turnbull is not accustomed to failure in school, finance, business, politics or law. A Rhodes scholar, he defeated the Thatcher government as a wily young barrister over its bid to ban MI5 agent Peter Wright’s Spycatcher memoir. He made a fortune selling Australia’s first commercial internet service provider before the dotcom crash, ran Goldman Sachs’ Australian operations and rose to be opposition leader barely four years after entering parliament.