Election campaigns are hotbeds of madness, especially in the first weeks. Something exacerbated when there’s school holidays and more general breaks like a four day Easter weekend.

Luckily for madness fans, this election campaign has all of the above, right now.

This might be why one of the crazier political campaigning theories is being tossed around.

The genesis is along the northern beaches suburbs of Sydney in the once very safe Liberal seat of Warringah, where Tony Abbott lost to progressive independent Zali Steggall who felled the former prime minister on a single issue climate change campaign with a 12 percent primary vote slump.

This year Steggall is up for re-election and the Liberals have nominated Katherine Deves, a lawyer, mother of three who has a white bread bio on the Liberal website. Deves, who only joined the Liberals towards the end of last year was a handpicked “captain’s pick” by Scott Morrison.

She is, however, proving to be anything but white bread.

She is a fierce opponent of having transgender athletes compete in women’s sport – a controversial stance backed by social media posts which have been removed and for which she’s apologised. Many of these posts were offensive and often hurtful.

Morrison has backed Deves – as has Tony Abbott – while moderate New South Wales Liberal Treasurer Matt Keane is demanding she be disendorsed. It’s a messy internal political fight that seems to be missing a rational point.

Welcome to the crazy theory of rolling out a “red wall” strategy in Australia.

The red wall was the supposed political barrier the British Conservatives needed to bring down if they were to make up for the demographic realignment in their heartland occurring in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

Boris Johnson and his band of tricksters pulled it off, ripping into apparent “Red British Labour” territory in the middle, east and north of England, taking dozens of seats previously solidly left.

The nexus between what happened in Britain in 2019 and the political spin emanating from the anti-trans Liberal in Sydney’s northern beaches is the idea a culture war is being fermented in one part of the country in order to win seats elsewhere.

The theory is the Liberals know they can’t win Warringah and Deves is a useful sacrifice to stir up socially conservative views in outer suburban and regional seats otherwise seen as traditional Labor.

This theory might work but there are a couple of hurdles needed to be cleared if it’s going to be a success.

Liberals have their sights on Labor seats like Longman and Blair outside Brisbane, Hunter and Paterson near Newcastle, Greenway and Parramatta in western Sydney and McEwen in north western Melbourne and Lyons in central Tasmania – all possible pickups if this socially conservative pitch actually worked.

As well as the serious question of whether it will work there’s a potential backwash. For every Labor seat the Liberals might snatch, there’s one in and around the metropolitan centres they might lose.

A swag of Coalition seats are already under threat because of voter dissatisfaction on climate, integrity and respect for women, including Brisbane in Queensland, Wentworth, Mackellar and North Sydney in New South Wales, Higgins, Flinders, Goldstein and Kooyong in Melbourne’s sprawling east, Curtin in Perth and Boothby in Adelaide. These all have seemingly attractive independents backing those moderate causes.

So that’s a possible equation that has as many as eight possible gains for up to 10 losses. In an election already too close for real comfort, it’s a high risk game.

The other factor counting against a successful Australian play of the British “Red Wall” gambit is the presence of compulsory voting.

The British Conservatives pulled off their bold move because enough disillusioned Labour voters just stayed home, uninspired by the unpalatable Jeremy Corbyn and unable to vote for either the Tories or the strident anti-Europe UKIP (UK Independence) Party.

Here, a lot of voters who might be unhappy with Labor will have to vote or might choose to end up in the ALP column after giving the Greens a first preference.

If this anti-trans culture war, vote swap madness is a real thing, someone has way too much time on their hands.