Scott Morrison's biggest enemy isn't the cohort of colleagues who don't like him, it's that some of those who do like him have a gnawing sense the jig is up.

Politics is full of people who can't stand each other but who nevertheless work in pursuit of a common goal, sometimes for years.

Every government of every persuasion has this dynamic, even in the most productive of partnerships.

Imagine, for example, if Paul Keating had an iPhone in 1990-91.

What Keating might've texted to colleagues about Bob Hawke would have made a wharfie blush.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

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So, it'll be no surprise to Nationals or Liberals to read that Barnaby Joyce described the Prime Minister as a "hypocrite and a liar" in March 2021, when he was angrily footloose on the backbench.

Nor will it surprise Coalition folk to hear Joyce, now a rinsed and recycled Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister, today defend Morrison and declared warm fealty.

That's politics. It's full of backflips, fakes, fibbers and flakes.

And should we be surprised that Morrison rejected Joyce's offer to resign?

No. Not at all.

The Good Ship Morrison can ill afford more instability, given its weatherworn sails and a crew too busy with a leaking hull to steer into calmer waters.

But time is quickly running out for a course correction.

There's no detectable talk of mutiny. More disappointment and frustration.

One Cabinet minister insists Morrison's frontbench is "rock solid behind the PM", blaming the summer of discontent for the government's current woes, saying Australians' hopes for 2022 have been dashed by the virus surge and the PM is copping it.

The minister said the government had two months to hold its nerve and get on top of Omicron, to prove to voters it was competently managing the pandemic.

Implicit in the minister's comments is a recognition that the electorate no longer believes the pandemic is being competently managed.

In this context, it's no wonder the PM told the National Press Club this week that the election "is not a referendum on the government".

Nor will Morrison want the election to be a referendum on his character, as he so successfully made the 2019 election about Bill Shorten's character.

Liberals, even those who don't particularly like Morrison, last year downplayed the prospect of any lingering damage from French President Emmanuel Macron's extraordinary attack on the PM.

Australians will back their Prime Minister over a spurned French President any day, was their thinking.

But Barnaby Joyce's frank assessment and the leaked text exchange between former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and another Liberal — purportedly a federal cabinet minister who allegedly called the PM a "fraud" and a "complete psycho" — will be much harder to dismiss, given the mood of the electorate.

As one Coalition MP put it this week: "People will tolerate you, even if they don't like you, if you're doing a good job. If you're seen as not doing a good job, and they don't like you, well … that's not good."

Holding the show together is now critical to Morrison's chances of rehabilitating his public image and projecting a sense of control.

This will require discipline, which will be sorely tested this week when parliament resumes amid an unresolved and heated internal dispute over religious discrimination.

But if any more of Morrison's colleagues surrender to the sense that the jig is up, it really will be.