Tony Abbott might have few friends left in the Liberals after last week’s outburst but conservative defector Cory Bernardi insists he’d welcome the former prime minister to his newly formed party of one.

Senator Bernardi has offered up “the warm welcoming embrace of Australian Conservatives” to Mr Abbott and others who think governments should live within their means, immigration needs to serve the country and electricity bills are too high.

Mr Abbott last week identified a change of course on those issues as essential to preventing a “drift to defeat”, prompting a swift rebuke from Malcolm Turnbull and other cabinet ministers who dubbed the intervention “sad”.

Mr Turnbull on Monday blamed Mr Abbott’s calculated critique on the government for the Coalition’s worst Newspoll result in two years.

Labor has opened a 10-point lead over the Coalition as voters desert the government for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Senator Bernardi said the poll result reinforced the view that policy changes were desperately needed.

“People are increasingly disillusioned with mainstream parties and are seeking alternatives,” Senator Bernardi told Sky News.

He slammed ministers’ “hysterical overreaction” to Mr Abbott’s policy initiatives, saying it showed the government was “struggling to win the narrative”.

The former prime minister’s chief of staff Peta Credlin said it was a bad look for Mr Turnbull to be discussing opinion polls and should stay above the fray.

“The government needs to stop talking about the things insiders in this place, Canberra, are talking about and needs to focus on what ordinary people are worried about – cost of living, the penalty rates issue, renewable energy and electricity prices,” she told Sky News.

Instead, they were obsessing about things to “keep their bums on ministerial leather” and that’s the problem because Senator Hanson was filling a void on issues people care about.

Ms Credlin pointed out a graph of polling shows the coalition’s decline started not long after the July federal election when Mr Turnbull led the party to a narrow victory with a loss of 14 seats.

“Tony Abbott spoke out on Thursday because the polls are plummeting. Him speaking out on Thursday is not the reason the polls plummeted,” she said.

Ms Credlin claimed some Coalition MPs she’s spoken to are assuming they’ve already lost the next election.