Far from marching toward a historic fourth consecutive term, the Allan government is beginning to look more like an opposition in waiting.

When Labor MPs hold their regular caucus meeting on Tuesday, the issue of whether or not to dump Premier Jacinta Allan as leader should come to a head.

Although some senior MPs are already pointing to Thursday for a formal leadership spill, or as late as July when parliament returns after the winter break, the delay is simply to buy time. They want Allan to fall on her sword, resign from the leadership, and allow a successor to reset the government before the election.

John Brumby was the last Victorian leader to do so, when he stepped down as opposition leader in March 1999 amid concerns he didn’t have what it took to defeat Jeff Kennett.

Brumby agreed to stand aside in favour of Bracks, who was viewed as a stronger electoral prospect, and six months later Bracks led Labor to its shock victory over Kennett.

Allan, despite being incredibly close to him, is not John Brumby, and those waiting for her to follow his lead will be waiting well beyond July.

Despite polling showing the party’s primary vote would instantly improve if she did get out the way, Allan has made it clear she won’t budge.

Which, after more than 12 months of leadership speculation, has forced the matter to a stalemate. What we are watching is a far less polished attempt at a coup than those we have come to expect on a very regular basis from the Victorian Liberal Party. And that’s saying something.

There is no challenger with the political weight to directly confront Allan, no co-ordinated bloc of MPs willing to formally declare she has lost the confidence of the party room, and no union heavyweight prepared to declare the leadership untenable.

Within the movement, particularly among senior figures in the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union and the Electrical Trades Union, there is deep unease about the consequences of destabilising the leadership at this point. That prospect of a full-scale royal commission into the “Big Build” is viewed by some as a far greater existential threat than current polling.

In other words, the very issues eroding Allan’s authority publicly are, internally, also insulating her. Corruption talk weakens her standing in the electorate but raises the stakes so high within the party and affiliated unions that many conclude continuity is the safer option. Allan also retains structural advantages. Inside the party, the debate has hardened into two competing propositions. One argues that stability is itself a form of strength and that changing leaders so close to an election would confirm chaos, not resolve it, with Labor’s problems broader than any one figure. The other argues the opposite, that the current trajectory is electoral free fall, and only a clean break can reset voter perceptions before polling day.

Current polling shows Labor is facing the threat of an absolute drubbing. In polling by both Freshwater Strategy and DemosAU, the party is trailing both the Coalition and One Nation with a primary vote share in the low 20s. On a two-party preferred basis Labor loses the election in both polls.

Allan’s approval rating of -37 to -39, depending on which poll you’re reading, shows more than an apathetic dislike for her, it represents a visceral hatred. And that rating has been baked in for months, and is only getting worse.

If she hasn’t been able to turn things around in the almost three years she’s had the job, colleagues are right to question why there should be any hope she can do it now.

Why she hasn’t resonated with the public will be the subject of political studies for years to come, though it’s hard to argue sexism hasn’t played a major role. Why she’s on the nose with colleagues is far easier to ascertain.

Very few dispute that she outworks many of her colleagues or that she brought a calmer tone to the premiership following the dominance of Daniel Andrews. The issue, repeatedly raised in private, is her political and strategic judgment.

The Suburban Rail Loop has become but one defining example given her stubborn refusal to pivot on her signature project despite fiscal strain and public scepticism.

The same criticism extends to her law and order policies, where responses have often been seen too slow and too reactive to political pressure. Her belated acknowledgment that IBAC required stronger powers, with reforms pushed out to the end of 2027, sent some colleagues apoplectic.

None of this is to suggest Allan is without defence. She inherited a government already under strain from a decade of ambitious infrastructure expansion and rising debt pressures left by Daniel Andrews. But there are questions around her inability to distance herself from him and chart her own political course.

The problem for Allan and Labor now is that the numbers are not moving. And with an election months away, the window for change is narrowing fast.

Shannon Deery is the Herald Sun’s state politics editor