His colleagues met at a retreat to plot the future. Barnaby couldn’t wait to leave

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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.

Barnaby Joyce has feuded with Nationals leader David Littleproud.

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 election that the Nationals were modernising and were no longer merely “elastic-sided boot cockies coming to Canberra just supporting farmers”. Joyce took this as a personal slight from Littleproud, whom Joyce views as a hollow man.

The remark came after this masthead revealed Littleproud had effectively barred Joyce from campaigning outside his seat because of a view that city voters were turned off by him, and that he was preparing to dump him from shadow cabinet.

Other politicians might have hung up the boots after such turbulence. But Joyce, 58, is a political animal and life on the backbench, indeed life as a civilian, is not his go. Joyce cites Bible passages and Greek mythology with ease; his ego is difficult to tame. And his strategic brain is sharper than his gruff style suggests. His various public disgraces have not, in his mind, ruled him out of playing a leading role in public life.

And so with only a remote prospect of serving in a cabinet, his head appears to have been turned by the lure of an opportunity to eventually take over from Pauline Hanson as the figurehead of the populist right.

Joyce has, through the Coalition’s debate on net zero, demonstrated an increasingly wavering faith in the joint partyroom and he has put distance between himself and some of his colleagues.

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson.

Even though the Nationals are almost certainly going to dump net zero, Joyce has waged a personal crusade on the issue. (Throughout a party review of the policy, led by prominent net zero opponent Matt Canavan, Joyce has barely engaged with his colleagues.)

This scorched earth strategy is not unlike those employed by rebel MPs Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. In all cases, the MPs barely spoke to their party leaders in the periods before their departures.

Previous incarnations of the Nationals led by John Anderson or Warren Truss would be more likely to settle such disputes. Now, the Liberal and National party rooms seem consumed by ideological schisms and politicians who have forgotten how to talk to one another.

The Hastie and Joyce episodes invite the same question: how potent could a right-wing, Nigel Farage-style force be in Australia – a country with a preferential voting system, and which blocks illegal immigration?

Joyce has more experience than Hastie or Price, and he may give One Nation’s brand of anti-immigration, pro-white politics a higher ceiling than it has enjoyed under Hanson. This could seriously damage the Nationals, particularly if more MPs follow him. But while his brand of tell-it-like-it-is larrikinism may make him a cult hero in parts of regional Australia, he’s the country’s second most disliked politician behind Lidia Thorpe, according to polling conducted by Resolve Political Monitor.

For Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, this is more unwanted disunity. But she might be happy to see the back of a man who decided long ago he had no interest in remaining in the tent.

Joyce’s flirtation with One Nation might flame out. On Saturday, he said this masthead’s reporting had forced his hand before he had enough time to really consider his plans.

His statement said it was untenable for him to remain in the Nationals party room in Canberra. But he has not formally ripped up his membership yet. He has not denied holding lengthy, detailed talks with Hanson – nor has he spoken publicly about One Nation.

Politicians return to Canberra on October 27. Joyce will be under huge pressure to declare his hand by then. His Nationals colleagues – who spent the weekend unsuccessfully trying to get Joyce on the phone – face a nervous wait.

“It’s like buying car,” Nationals senator Ross Caddell said of Joyce. “When you sit inside it seeing all the new things it does better than the old car, you’re very excited. It’s only when you’re sitting at the desk and work out how much you’ve got to pay for it that doubt creeps in.”