By ABC's Jonathan Green

Photo: Tony Abbott blue ties represent a strange act of defiant principle. (AAP Image: Quentin Jones)

Tony Abbott's blue ties aren't just shiny swathes of silk - they are crafted and premeditated reminders of all that he replaced, writes Jonathan Green.

Call me old-fashioned, but I would like to think this of my Prime Minister: that he is a man of intelligence, independent thought and creative intellectual flexibility; a man who knows, trusts and expresses his own mind.

Call me trivial, but I'll never be able to convince myself that Tony Abbott is any of those things while he keeps wearing those blue ties.

The ones he has worn since June 2013. Without exception. Every day. With an almost obsessive discipline.

To me it marks him as a politician compulsively obsessed by the finest detail of political messaging, and more than that, a man prepared to sacrifice himself utterly to the rigor of that discipline, to surrender even something as small, simple and silly as the choice of a tie in the morning to the necessities of political craft.

And that in turn erodes confidence in almost everything else he does. What else can be trusted? What else is a genuine expression ... what is heartfelt, when even this small detail of dress is designed as a subconscious supplement to the daily message? That degree of calculation must be all pervasive.

Remember how this started, when Julia Gillard, beleaguered, losing, scratching for a last roll of the dice, that restatement of the gender politics that had played well once, and, who knows, might again, warned at that famous Women for Gillard Speech of the prospect of an incoming Abbott government:

On that day, the 14th of September, we are going to make a big decision as a nation, it's a decision about whether once again we will banish women's voices from the core of our nation's political life. I invite you to imagine it, a prime minister, a man with a blue tie, who goes on holidays to be replaced by a man in a blue tie, a treasurer who delivers a budget wearing a blue tie, to be supported by a finance minister, another man in a blue tie, women once again banished from the centre of Australia's political life.

Listen to that speech again and the whole facile horror of our recent politics comes flooding back.

Remember how, the day after, Kevin Rudd appeared in a blue tie, "chosen by Therese", how Sophie Mirabella appeared swathed like a pet shop calendar kitten in azure, how Tony Abbott would never be seen again in anything other than a slim strip of shiny blue.

And Julie Gillard was wrong, of course; with the Prime Minister in Davos for the World Economic Forum, his deputy Warren Truss fronted the media yesterday in a tie of crimson and silver stripes.

As if it mattered. Because of course the colour of a tie is nothing, is no more than, well, the colour of a tie, until of course it becomes a fixed point of some strange act of defiant principle.

Which is what it became for Tony Abbott in the immediate aftermath of the Women for Gillard speech, a permanent sign that he was resolute and confident in his principles, that he would be a blue tie guy and proud of it ... and what was the subtext? That tie colour didn't matter? That gender balance in politics didn't matter? That he, Tony Abbott, would prove that he could govern for all of us regardless of the colour of his tie or the sex of his cabinet?

All of which just sounds absurd when you set it down, when you try and rationalise that small point of Prime Ministerial detail ... absurd except that it remains that small point of insistent prime ministerial detail. That in its very dogged, daily repetition it becomes significant ... if only because it is clearly so significant to the wearer. That somehow the tie has been crafted and premeditated and discussed, possibly focus-grouped and weighed through goodness knows what other sieves of qualitative reasoning, before being determined to be an essential part of the public Abbott persona.

No longer a tie, now a permanent reminder in a swathe of silk of all that he replaced. Because that's what Tony Abbott is wearing round his neck, day in, day out, in every public appearance: a small strip of cloth that says "Julia Gillard". Trophy, albatross or just a nuanced uniform, part of a calculated suit designed to indicate stylised power?

Maybe all of that in some strange combination that all but defies analysis ... but a true leader of independent character and will might eventually have the nerve to wear navy. Or claret. Or even paisley as a precursor pattern to spots.

Because at the end of the day it's just a tie.

It's more than that at the moment; it's a strange and permanent statement, and sometimes it's hard to look beyond it and the ruthless calculation that it represents.

Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. He is the author of The Year My Politics Broke. View his full profile here.

When is a blue tie more than just a blue tie? - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)