By Peter Hartcher
PETER Costello has made his toughest public attack yet on John Howard, saying the former prime minister appears to be incapable of taking responsibility for losing government and for losing his own seat.
Mr Howard has criticised his former deputy in his memoir. Mr Costello responded yesterday, saying: ''It's a self-serving account in which he appears to be incapable of taking responsibility for the defeat of the government and for losing his seat of Bennelong.
''There's no point in trying to blame other people. He was the leader. He was responsible.''
By claiming Mr Costello mishandled a leadership transition in the Howard government and branding him ''elitist'', Mr Howard has revived and increased their long-running rivalry.
This could damage the legacy of the Howard years and interfere with the efforts of Liberal leader Tony Abbott to keep scrutiny on the government.
Mr Abbott urged a meeting of Coalition MPs last week to ''make the government the issue''. Mr Howard's attack has made the Liberal Party the issue, as federal politicians return to Canberra for Parliament on Monday.
Mr Howard's memoir, Lazarus Rising, for which News Corporation's Harper Collins reportedly paid more than $400,000, goes on sale next week.
In the book, Mr Howard makes personal criticism of Mr Costello for the first time, calling him ''elitist''. He also blames Mr Costello for his own decision to hold on to the party leadership until the day he lost the 2007 election, and his seat.
Mr Howard claims he had intended to hand the leadership to the then treasurer in late 2006, but Mr Costello ruined his plan.
''Peter's inept handling of the December 1994 story incident [the revelation that Mr Howard had agreed to hand leadership to Mr Costello after 1½ terms of Parliament] created a situation where I had no alternative but to announce when I did that I would stay.'' Because Mr Costello was putting public pressure on him, he decided to dig in.
Mr Howard reveals that although he had lost the confidence of his cabinet in late 2007, he stayed on because his wife, Janette, and their three children ''were adamant that I should not look as if I were running from an electoral fight''.
Mr Howard became the first prime minister since 1929 to lose his own seat in an election. The Liberal Party recovered the seat of Bennelong in the election in August.
And while Mr Howard in his book describes Mr Costello as elitist, Mr Costello had enough popular appeal to hold his own seat in the same election.
A senior Liberal powerbroker, Senator Nick Minchin, yesterday took Mr Costello's side in the fight.
It was unfair to call Mr Costello elitist, he said. ''On the many occasions I was with him in the public sphere I thought he was fantastic with the Australian public.''
It was ''just unfortunate'' Mr Howard was not prepared to step aside in favour of Mr Costello.
A former Liberal leader, John Hewson, took Mr Howard's side.
Mr Costello ''never had the numbers and he never had the balls to challenge John Howard'', he said.