Sussan Ley has warned colleagues that disunity is death as speculation that Angus Taylor will soon launch a Liberal leadership challenge reaches fever pitch.

The opposition leader did not face a spill motion at Tuesday morning’s Liberal party room meeting. A spill motion was always considered unlikely given senators were not expected to attend due to estimates hearings.

However, some upper house MPs were present at the closed-door meeting, including the Victorian backbencher Jane Hume.

After warning on Monday that the party would be “wiped out” without an urgent change in direction, Hume directly challenged Ley at Tuesday’s meeting to outline how she planned to turn things around.

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In response, Ley told the room words to the effect of “disunity is death”, according to two Liberal MPs present at the meeting.

Hume is a moderate but supported the conservative Taylor in last year’s leadership ballot against Ley, infuriating her factional allies and contributing to her sacking from shadow cabinet.

The former shadow finance minister, who worked closely with Taylor when he was Peter Dutton’s shadow treasurer, has been mentioned as a candidate for deputy leader if Taylor wins the leadership.

Taylor’s supporters are adamant the 59-year-old has the numbers to win the leadership this week, arguing Ley’s position was untenable after the latest Newspoll showed the Coalition’s primary vote has collapsed to 18% – nine percentage points behind One Nation.

Some MPs are expecting the shadow defence minister to resign from Ley’s frontbench on Wednesday afternoon before a challenge on Friday morning at the latest, although senior conservatives are cautioning that the timing is still up in the air.

Ley is refusing to voluntarily step aside and her allies remain sceptical that Taylor has the numbers.

Senior moderates remain supportive of Ley and are refusing to do a deal with Taylor to engineer her exit, meaning the rightwinger will need to woo centre-right and unaligned MPs to secure the leadership.

Ley defeated Taylor 29 votes to 25 to win the Liberal leadership after the 2025 election.

The makeup of the party room has changed since then, with Ley losing supporters Hollie Hughes, Linda Reynolds and Gisele Kapterian, who was allowed to vote in the ballot while counting continued in Bradfield.

Taylor has gained an extra supporter in Jess Collins, who replaced Hughes in the senate.

Asked directly on Tuesday if he supported Ley remaining as leader, the Liberal frontbencher and moderate powerbroker Andrew Bragg told ABC’s RN Breakfast: “Yes, I do”.

The senior Liberal rightwinger Jonathon Duniam said Taylor needed to come clean about his plans.

“If there is an intention for leadership to change, then people need to make their views clear. If they’re not going to, they need to rule it out,” he told Sky News.

The former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull echoed that view.

“If Angus wants to be leader of the Liberal party, he should stand up and say so, and say why, which is exactly what I did in the Senate courtyard nearly 11 years ago,” Turnbull said, referencing his successful challenge against Tony Abbott in 2015.

The senior Labor minister Tanya Plibersek said Ley “hasn’t really been given a chance” by her Liberal colleagues.

Plibersek – who was a minister during the tumultuous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years – said she had never witnessed as much “chaos, back-biting, backgrounding [and] briefing” as that playing out as Taylor plotted a leadership tilt.

“It’s a very typical approach,” she said. “What happens is the disgruntled alternative candidate to the leadership causes chaos, and then they point to the chaos and they say, ‘oh, there’s a reason for leadership change’.

“I think it’s very disappointing that she [Ley] hasn’t really been given a chance to do her job but it’s a matter for the Liberal party. What’s important in our Australian democracy is that there is a strong opposition. I think it’s healthy for our democracy to have that. And at the moment, we’ve got an opposition that’s just focused on themselves.”