Fairfax media has condemned the Abbott government, with several of its flagship papers criticising the prime minister for his approach to governing.

Within 24 hours of the Sydney Morning Herald condemning the Abbott government as in “a shambles”, one of its key columnists has written them off as “idiots and fools”.

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According to the top opinion piece in Friday’s Australian Financial Review, penned by Laura Tingle, Abbott is making policy and political calls “that go beyond reckless” desperately trying to save himself.

“A government that has not just utterly lost its way but its authority,” Ms Tingle writes.

The AFR laments lost opportunities to fix the budget which were sacrificed to pragmatism after February’s near-death spill motion and the disposal of Campbell Newman and his Queensland Liberal government.

It seems the stars are aligning for the Abbott government in the Fairfax camp, and it is firmly in the negative.

The task of government is “too hard” for Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his top brass, an editorial in Thursday’s Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed.

“It is as though he (Mr Abbott) is finding it all too hard to work out what governments do,” the SMH stated.

And “none-too-convincing” was how the Canberra Times characterised Mr Abbott’s assurance that the media had nothing to fear from metadata laws.

The prime minister’s credibility is in doubt after breaking most of his electoral promises and introducing unpopular new initiatives since his election.

But there may be a more pragmatic reason behind Fairfax’s fetish for the Prime Minister – he’s clear clickbait.

Among the top five stories at each of Fairfax’s metro websites Mr Abbott features heavily.

The turning point for Fairfax coverage appears to have been the rhetorical flip from claiming a “budget emergency” was putting Australia in peril to calling next budget “pretty dull”.

“We have got the budget situation from out of control to manageable,” Mr Abbott said on Wednesday, with budget-cutting legislation still held up in the Senate.

“Wednesday’s declaration was the Abbott government’s white flag on difficult reform – a practical corollary to its first over-the-top budget,” Mark Kenny wrote in The Age.

“It was also the moment that a long crab-walk from the promise of surpluses as far as the eye could see became a full retreat,” he wrote.

The Age left it there as the only Fairfax metro daily not to run an editorial on federal politics.