Former prime minister John Howard has warned against an alliance between the Coalition and One Nation, as the Liberal Party’s campaign chief urges downbeat MPs to play the long game in countering Pauline Hanson.

Howard told this masthead that “the only party that we should ever be in coalition with is the National Party”. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has resisted pressure from a minority of right-wing MPs to collaborate with Hanson, whose party One Nation retains a big lead on the Coalition in the polls.

But Howard, who as Liberal leader backed the move to disendorse Hanson as a Liberal candidate in 1996 for her remarks about Indigenous Australians, declared “the way to deal with the One Nation challenge is for the Liberal and National parties to be the best demonstration of themselves”.

Hanson has repeatedly said Taylor should work with her, even though her stated aim is to win Coalition seats and her support is coming largely from ex-Coalition voters.

Howard told disaffected conservative voters: “I just say to people, if you want a good centre-right alternative to this miserable rotten mob you’ve got now, then support a Coalition that’s working hard on policy alternatives. They tell me they are.”

Taylor and his allies should develop compelling ideas and “advocate for them”, Howard said in an interview, adding that voters would pay closer attention to One Nation and other alternatives to Labor as the election neared.

“If they do that, I think they can recover the ground that they’ve lost. They’ve got to do the work,” Howard said.

“I thought Angus Taylor’s reply to the budget was very good. I thought what he said about indexation of the tax scales was very good, and I think he started on the right track with immigration.”

Howard, as prime minister, fended off One Nation on policies, rather than personally attacking Hanson or her supporters.

He said that a coalition with One Nation should not be contemplated. However, he acknowledged the Coalition would need to work with the parliament that voters elect should it fall short of a majority and require crossbench support.

Howard said the Victorian election in November could be a turning point if, as he predicted, Coalition leader Jess Wilson charged ahead of One Nation and beat Labor.

Taylor has barely moved the needle on the Coalition’s record-low polling since taking the leadership in February.

New Liberal Party federal director Lincoln Folo briefed MPs in Canberra on Tuesday about the party’s strategy to compete with Hanson. Folo is a former National Party boss who will run the Coalition’s next election campaign.

Three sources who listened to Folo said that the party’s research showed a significant chunk of One Nation voters were persuadable and liked the sound of Taylor’s new policies. The problem, he said in the closed-door meeting, was that not many voters had heard anything about Taylor’s plans.

“They didn’t leave us overnight and they won’t come back overnight,” Folo said of Coalition voters who drifted to Hanson, as MPs wonder how long Taylor can last if polls do not improve.

Folo’s view is that voters are currently overlooking Hanson’s various slip-ups because an election was not in sight and they were not being forced to make a choice. The Coalition’s job, he said, was to be ready when voters started to pay attention.

That interpretation, which some MPs viewed as overly optimistic, mirrored one put to this masthead by a Labor cabinet minister on Tuesday. The senior Labor MP said they expected One Nation to remain in a strong polling position right up until the election because the economy would remain flat. Under heightened scrutiny during an election campaign, the minister predicted Hanson’s weaknesses would be exposed.

One Nation MP David Farley, who won the seat of Farrer in a May byelection, gave his maiden speech on Tuesday and raised eyebrows among Liberal MPs due to the absence of One Nation talking points.

Farley did not mention migration or cultural values in a 28-page speech. Instead, he noted that his seat was “home to many from different lands and cultures seeking a safe life”, including “established and new Australians”.

He was more than three-quarters of the way through his speech before he mentioned Hanson, with whom he clashed privately when it was revealed during the byelection that Farley had been a member of the Labor Party.

“I stand here as a One Nation member but I represent every constituent of Farrer,” he said.

One Liberal MP watching his speech texted this masthead: “He will be running as an independent at the next election.”