Over the past few weeks there have been rumours that South Australian Liberal senator, and hard-right warrior, Cory Bernardi would quit the Liberal party and launch his own conservative political organisation.

Bernardi has apparently been “inspired” by Donald Trump’s success in the US. He (along with Gina Rinehart) met up with Trump’s campaign team at the end of last year. He’s removed all reference to the Liberal party from his social media accounts, and he’s deleted all his tweets. But what’s even weirder is the fact that he appears to still be tweeting, he just deletes everything he posts within a few hours.

What a strange dude.

This morning Andrew Bolt wrote that Bernardi was set to quit the Liberals and set up a new party based on his “Australian Majority” campaign organisation that apparently has 50,000 members (what this really means is that there are 50,000 people on the email list). It might be tempting to dismiss the report because it’s from Bolt, but regardless of what we think of him he is well connected to the conservative Liberal MPs.

Bolt wrote that if Bernardi quits “he will be free to say exactly what he thinks, and his Senate vote now becomes one that the Liberals must woo to win. He also has five years left of his Senate term, and a great shot at being re-elected after that.”

Later this morning the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann reported that Bernardi was set to make the move in the next 48 hours.

Cory Bernardi splitting with the coalition to set up his own conservative party pic.twitter.com/xrKhIPkHrA

— neigh (@naycation) February 5, 2017

Cory Bernardi set to leave the Liberal Party in the next 48 hours. Hats on sale soon after. #auspol pic.twitter.com/5TMCQ4EctH

— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) February 5, 2017

Normally to register a new political party you need 500 members, but a sitting MP or Senator can bypass that requirement and establish a new party themselves, regardless of how many members it has.

What Does This Mean For Turnbull?

It’s tempting to laugh off the whole situation because, well, it’s Cory Bernardi. Surely his brand of uber-conservatism, bigotry and homophobia won’t get much of a run, right?

The thing is, Bernardi isn’t trying to win government. He doesn’t want to get 50 percent of the population to vote for him. He seems himself as the representative of a particular section of Australian society strongly opposed progressive social change, like same-sex marriage. As a crossbench senator he will be able to wield a significant amount of influence on pretty much every single proposed law.

The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has spooked a lot of conservative Liberal MPs. They’re worried that Malcolm Turnbull has neglected the Liberal base and that One Nation is picking up disaffected voters.

A new poll out today shows that the Coalition’s primary vote has plummeted to just 35 percent. The collective vote for minor parties, including the Greens and One Nation, is at 29 percent. There’s a clear sense of frustration across the electorate, and voters seem keen to punish the major parties.

Bernardi is hoping that he can channel some of that frustration into his new, conservative movement.

All up it’s bad news for Malcolm Turnbull, and depending on how successful Bernardi is, it could be bad news for people who oppose his conservative values, too.