Australia’s Conservatives Are Paying the Price of Kowtowing to the Left
The writer is in Australia.
When the so-called ‘moderate’ MPs in a Westminster conservative political party remove a sitting Prime Minister from their own party, one who has delivered a majority government but is to the right of these moderates, the long-term effects are not good. Back in 1990, and after delivering 11 years of majority governments, Maggie Thatcher was knifed by the wets or moderates in the British Tory party. It is arguable that the party has never recovered. Sure, it won elections – we had 14 years of Tory governments in the UK until Keir Starmer won for Labour last year. But those Tory governments under David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak governed full on as Labour lite (to not so lite) ones. Liz Truss was almost immediately forced out for trying to shift direction. Spending, up. Taxes, up. Total capitulation on the culture wars that relate to schools, patriotism, free speech, massively over-powerful unelected judges, attacking the democratic parts of the constitution, over-the-top huge immigration, being prepared to appoint actual conservatives to anything and being afraid to take on the worst aspects of multiculturalism. And don’t forget for two-and-a-half years a stunning willingness to travel down the path of lockdown thuggery, weaponising the police, embracing ‘nudge’ propaganda, closing schools and spending on steroids, all to ape the approach of the Communist Chinese politburo. Right now it’s an open question whether the world’s oldest political party, the British Conservative Party, will be able to survive the coming electoral inroads of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party – such is the total lack of trust that its base voters have in anything the Tory leaders promise or pledge. (It’s not easy to run the line ‘okay, we made these promises four times in the past and never delivered, in fact did the opposite, but this time guys, well, we double-promise-cross-our-hearts that this time it’ll be different’.)
My claim is that something a little bit similar has happened to the Australian Liberal Party. It has not recovered from its axing of the man from the Right-side of the partyroom who was one of the most effective Opposition leaders ever and who had delivered the party a large majority government in 2013. He was defenestrated by his own party MPs. (And yes, I know Tony Abbott was a disappointment on free speech and a bunch else beside when in office but as I said back then, “if your answer to Abbott is Malcolm Turnbull then you are the problem, not Tony”.) Since then we have seen the same pattern as in Britain. The partyroom is hopelessly divided between Black Hand Gang wets and what I would call ‘actual conservatives’. The former want to park the Liberal Party an inch to the Right of Labour and then move Leftwards as soon as Labour does. They revel in focus groups and shun value-based campaigning. Truth be told, many were quietly for ‘Yes’ as regards the Voice, at least until the writing was on the wall. Very little concern for free speech. And as with the British Tories, we had myriad supposed ‘liberal’ MPs who disgracefully embraced lockdown thuggery at least as enthusiastically as their British cousins.
All of which brings me to the current Coalition election campaign. It has been pretty woeful. But why? My guess here is that it boils down to trying to drive down the middle between moderates and conservatives in the partyroom. If Team Dutton had come out bravely and run an election on pulling us out of Net Zero, with all the massive economic advantages that would entail, I think the Coalition would have romped home – despite the vitriol the ABC and Fairfax Press would have thrown at them. If it’d come out way earlier and harder on immigration cuts (because 100,000 isn’t that big a cut and anyway, do you believe they would follow through?), taking on the big business and university lobbies that disgracefully funded and full-on supported the ‘Yes’ Voice campaign, it would have romped home. A values-based campaign would have been more like Pierre Poilievre’s in Canada. (And if Poilievre’s Tories win and Dutton loses the attempt to blame Trump will be patently laughable, remembering that Trump has relentlessly mocked Canada and that three-quarters of Canadian exports go to a US putting tariffs on them. Actually, a Poilievre win should shame the Dutton campaign team for the rest of their working lives.)
The incoherent half-matching of Labour spending pledges and refusal to fight the culture wars that so desperately need fighting all seems to stem from trying to keep both camps in the partyroom if not happy, then not incandescently angry. Call it the ‘let’s try at all costs to win Tim Wilson’s seat back from the Teals’ strategy. And boy oh boy do I hate that strategy and think it worthless.
So, Dutton’s campaign launch praising of the Morrison government approach to lockdowns won not a single vote but sure got an awful lot of Right-of-centre voters like me thinking we might preference a minor party before the thuggish Libs. Ditto for Dutton evading the ‘what’s a woman?’ question, as though there wasn’t loads of political capital in being honest and not cowardly and afraid of people and groups who’d never vote for you. Ditto for Dutton’s support of the eSafety Commissioner and for Kevin Rudd as ambassador? Why support them? And why hasn’t Labour’s failed Voice referendum self-indulgence been front and centre in the campaign? (You win if you think it’s because an awful lot of Lib MPs wanted a conscience vote and don’t want to drag that up again.) Why give Jacinta Price the Musk-like job of finding budgetary waste rather than a big-ticket cultural role? (You could be forgiven for thinking the idiots in campaign central were deliberately trying to sideline her.)
Likewise, why is it so hard to make political hay out of an Albanese Government that has seen living standards drop nearly 8% and electricity prices skyrocket? Correct answer: because you haven’t got the cojones to tell voters the truth. That Net Zero is impoverishing and totally stupid with the US now abandoning it and joining China (two new coal-fired plants a week) and India. No, Albo, Australia is not some moral beacon whose economic suicide any other countries will mimic. But commit to this idiocy, only 20 years slower, and your whole set of policies becomes incoherent. ‘You’ve agreed the world as we know it will end so tell me why we should be going slowly-slowly?’
Back on April 5th in the Spectator I argued that every Coalition campaign advisor should be fired. Three weeks on and the case for that is now blatantly clear, such is the value-free vacuum and incoherence of what we voters are being offered. Sure, maybe we can limp over the line. Let’s hope. But it beggars belief that a Government like this Albo one has the Liberal Party so afraid of its own shadow. Actually, make that afraid of the shadow of the Tony Abbott wing of the party, the one that Mr Dutton was supposed to represent.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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Prof Allan speaks the truth. The public want someone who can stand up speak his truth, clearly articulate policies, look and sound like a leader and not another fence sitter. While Albo is deeply unappealing, this election is Dutton’s to lose.
Until the Tories here purge the leftie scum from the MPs then why would any of the voters trust them to deliver on their promises? If we had a strong recall system as proposed in The Harrogate Agenda that would give the power back to the people, then any Tory leftie could be ditched from the party and subject to a recall vote so the people can get properly represented.
I don’t trust them and probably never will now. I do often think that a lot of the six million who voted for them at the last election are closet lefties.
The Conservative Party MUST be wiped off the political map of this country. Repeating myself? Damned right I am. What Bozo and Fishy did to Britain was treason of the highest order. Actually it won’t really matter what happens to the Con Party or the uniparty in general because…
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
When you talk of treason, don’t forget the prominent roles of Cameron and May. When you look at their actual records, you would think they were members of the Labour Party. Cameron is on video saying how much he wanted Muslims at the top level of all British institutions….
It’s funny I don’t know of any Muslim countries wanting Christians close to the levers of power! Any trust in the CINOs has gone for good.
I agree regarding Cameron and May. The truth is that any semblance of real Conservativism was eradicated when Heseltine, Baker and the rest got rid of Margaret Thatcher and Maggie was only dragging the lamentable tories back to a place before treacherous Heath.
I think the reality was that being a member of the EU, meaning much power had been delegated it was inevitable that all parties must become very similar to each other. This meant they must all adhere to EU laws and regulations. The mask slipped after Brexit simply because the party/ies were filled with lazy compliant apparatchiks. Hence we witnessed the traitorous behaviour of many MPs scuttling off to Brussels trying to (and successfully) undermine the British negotiating position. So there seems to be a hangover in the UK where most of the MPs are, at heart, EU supporters. I think many of them would like to see the country fail so they can say Brexit was a failure. But equally there seems to be a similar thing happening in Western Europe, but only some have realised what’s going on. in the Western world in general the media have been taken over by left supporting types, perhaps because the corporations are also left leaning because left wing governments are so slack with money and are nearly all willing to support mass immigration to raise profits (and GDP). The fact that GDP per capita is going down is lost on most… Read more »
Thanks.
Precisely. For the last twenty-five years or more the so-called Conservative Party has been infested with Lib Dems masquerading with blue rosettes. They have ceased to be actually conservative – much as the Labour Party has ceased to be the party of labour, and the Liberal Democrats are neither liberal nor democratic.
The only answer is Reform UK.
I hope the answer has yet to emerge.Farage mat be a great campaigner but form a team worthy of running the country, I don’t think so. Behind the slogans and soundbites, it’s a shambles. And if they did become the majority party, how long do you think Farage would last as party leader before Zia kicked him aside and took over? There’s a reason that he bought the chairmanship
I think it comes basically from underestimating the electorate, and assuming that people don’t possess the information or intelligence to appreciate a values based campaign.
The truth obviously is the opposite. The collective intelligence of the population vastly exceeds that of the government.
As we are seeing now, in England.
Institutional capture and shifting the Overton Window – effective left-wing tactics for decades. And all the Conservatives did for the last 30 years was pander.
Poltics of the feeble-minded – Reform needs to push relentlessly on energy costs, immigration, public spending and ousting progressive claptrap from public life.
Time for the pendulum to swing back.
Just as in Britain the Australian Liberals, who used to be conservatives, became caught up in the globalisation narrative and all that goes with it, along with sky rocketing property prices driven largely by mass immigration and insane ‘negative gearing’ that put a rocket under prices. Thus, many Liberal voters made tons of money on their property (or properties) and the party rumbled on with no real principles behind it. Then reality sets in and the outcome is GDP per has gone nowhere, salaries have gone nowhere, property prices are extortionate and unaffordable for most young people, mass immigration, multiculturalism, and identity politics. Anyone half sane can now see that the entire saga has been one huge confidence trick, laced with fool’s gold, and the entire culture and nation is now totally unrecognisable with no easy way out of it. For Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand it reduces to variations along the same sad theme.
As it seems to be primarily Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand most affected by the leftward/globalist agenda, it does make you wonder just how much influence the Mad Monarch of Windsor has had in the process.
“And yes, I know Tony Abbott was a disappointment on free speech and a bunch else”
A decent article but could the author not drop the use of the ever so trendy and lazy “bunch?”
…’and much else’…is a far more eloquent and appropriate form of phrasing in what purports to be a learned opinion piece.
I cannot claim to have any knowledge of Australian politics other than it appears to me that the Australian Liberal Party is pursuing a route to oblivion in much the same way as Bozo and Fishy did with our own Con Party, presumably acting under similar orders.
Let it die.
My question is why is this happening in all Western countries, i.e. USA and its allies? Why is this whole climate, LGBTQ, DEI … nonsense being propagated by what were previously conservative political parties, that used to primarily be concerned with the national development of wealth via capitalism? Has this ‘disease’ spread to countries of the “Global South”? Certainly not Russia or China, so who is behind this destructive nonsense and why was it so happily accepted by Western politicians? Some claim the answer lies with the UN but why then have these ideas not been taken up by all countries? It appears that conservatives around the world are allowing themselves to be dictated to: by whom?