Hmmm....

In a rare confluence, Canada, Britain, and Australia held elections within a week of one another, although in Britain’s case, these were local elections in England. Yet England’s local elections may turn out to be the most consequential of the three for centre-right politics across the Western world. Last year I noted, amidst a gathering crisis of democracy, the rise of the New Right on both sides of the North Atlantic. Against that wider backdrop, at the start of the year, centre-right parties were expected to do well in all three countries.

In an interesting week, Canada’s Conservative Party saw a once 20-point advantage in the polls slide behind the governing Liberal Party on 28 April, UK Reform caused a political earthquake in England as it exceeded expectations and forecasts on 1 May, and Australia’s Liberal-National coalition suffered the shock of a significant swing against it to hand Labor a landslide re-election victory on 3 May. The polls proved reasonably accurate in capturing the electoral shifts in Canada and England but failed spectacularly in Australia. 

The explanation for the success of Reform in the UK holds a mirror to explain the failure of the Liberal-National parties’ Coalition in Australia. The inevitable post-mortems on failures of strategy and tactics will distribute the blame between the leader, party hierarchy, and communications team. The Liberal Party chose the most anodyne campaign theme imaginable – ‘Get Australia Back on Track’ (seriously!). The failure to brand the Coalition as a serious and credible alternative set of values more in tune with core Australian values is a failure principally of the leader. Dutton was too focus group-driven, reacted to Labor initiatives with a series of ‘me too’-isms, and lacked cut-through messaging ability.

International media – the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Indian Express, the UK Telegraph – emphasised the Trump factor as a major explanation for Dutton’s defeat, both directly in that Dutton was framed as an Australian Trump and indirectly because of the global volatility and chaos he had unleashed. I disagree. This is lazy commentary that feeds into the US and global anti-Trump narrative.

Peter Dutton refused to heed the exhortations freely offered by public intellectuals from among his core base to join the global shifts away from net zero, mass immigration, state censorship, DEI, and gender-fluid identity. Both he and his team seemed too ashamed to speak up for any identifiable conservative values, without which it becomes impossible to craft a narrative, strategy, and campaign tactics. When the party brass are too embarrassed to talk core conservative values, conservative voters are not motivated to vote for their side.

Labor succeeded in defining Dutton in the public consciousness as a dislikable meanie who, if put in power, would indulge his inner nasty persona. The Coalition couldn’t penetrate the teflon shield that protected PM Anthony Albanese’s aura of regular guy affability. They failed to frame a narrative about Albanese zooming in on his lies, deceptions, duplicity, evasions, and incompetence; on the falling standard of living by OECD benchmarks; on the looming theft of people’s savings through an impost on unrealised capital gains from superannuation funds that through bracket creep will rapidly trap a substantial number of Australians; on the betrayal of Israel and the timorous handling of the growing China threat.

The exceptionally target-rich record of the government in power was matched only by the most inept campaign I have witnessed. Labor didn’t deserve to win but boy did the Coalition deserve to lose. If they fail to confront and address their multiple value deficits, they will deserve to be consigned to the political wilderness for a long time to come.

Dutton’s alternative policy platform simply wasn’t compelling enough. ‘Since its election in 2022, the Albanese government has pursued an Australian version of Bidenomics with a high tax-and-spend program of action, says David Pearl, a former Treasury assistant secretary. Dutton at the start of the campaign in effect endorsed Labor’s idea that this approach was the solution to the problem, thus presenting a policy platform essentially indistinguishable from Albanese’s. Why then would voters throw out the Albanese government after just one three-year term in favour of Labor-lite Liberals, an ersatz version of the real deal?

The Folly and the Fantasy of Net Zero

Consider net zero, based on the cult-like faith of governments changing the weather, elevating that fantasy over the prosperity of families, and sacralising the fantasy to such an extent as to extend state power over individuals and businesses seemingly without limit. Last year Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Pact on climate change with a set of timetabled targets on emission reductions for various countries. That meant the absence of all the big emissions-spewing hitters: China, the US, Russia, India. Last month former British PM Tony Blair called for a major rethink of net zero policies, arguing that the effort to limit energy consumption and restrict fossil fuel production is ‘doomed to fail.’ Voters, he said, are ‘being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know the impact on global emissions is minimal.’

On 1 May, the US Congress voted to repeal the waiver that had allowed California to impose its EV mandate on several other states. The most striking part of the 246-164 vote to end California’s regulatory imperialism was the bipartisanship, with 35 Democrats joining the Republicans. This is a telling indicator of the extent to which the politics of EVs specifically and climate change in general have changed when even the Democrats are starting to abandon their progressive nostrums. No one seems to have told the major Australian parties.

Soaring energy costs coupled with very visible demonstrations of the harsh reality that ‘renewables’ in fact are the ‘unreliables’ of energy supply, creating intermittency and power outages, have brought home to consumers in stark terms the financial costs of the trajectory away from the fossil fuel mainstay for power generation and distribution to residential consumers and commercial customers. Yet, instead of taking advantage of the changing global narrative, Dutton doubled down on net zero commitment, but postponed the date for achieving Australia’s target by a few years. Similarly with regard to mass immigration, he promised only to cut Labor’s Big Australia target by 25 percent. In other words his vision was limited to managing Australia’s decline better and more gradually than the Albanese government.

These are not policy settings calculated to enthuse party activists nor excite and inspire voters. Someone should have reminded Dutton of the famous quote from Margaret Thatcher: ‘Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.’ 

The Importance of Conviction Leaders

The single most important political role of a party leader campaigning to win office against a ruling party in government is to provide leadership: the elusive ability to make others connect emotionally and intellectually to a larger cause that transcends their immediate self-interest. Leadership consists of articulating a bold and noble vision for a community and establishing standards of achievement and conduct, explaining why they matter, and inspiring or coaxing others to adopt the agreed goals and benchmarks as their personal goals.

Dutton singularly failed this test of leadership and this is the most potent explanation for his defeat despite multiple polls until the eve of the election confirming that the majority of Australians believed Albanese deserved to lose. But a majority also said Dutton hadn’t done enough to win back government. The net result is a loveless landslide victory for Labor that echoes what happened in the UK last year, with a historically low voter share but a commanding hold on parliamentary seats.

On present count Labor has 92 and the Liberal-National coalition 42 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, with results for 5 seats yet to be declared. However, as in the UK, in Australia too Labor’s support is soft. On a two-party preferred basis, Labor (six million votes) beat the Coalition (five million votes) by 54.7 to 45.3 percent. But on first preferences, Labor only won 34.8 percent of the votes cast. By way of contrast, Kevin Rudd won 83 seats in 2007 with 43.4 percent of votes cast.

Like Starmer in the UK, Albanese could mistake the loveless landslide of seats won as an electoral mandate for implementing an ideological agenda or be pressured towards that agenda by the left faction of the party and the trade unions. Like the UK, this could lead to a rapid escalation of popular anger against Labor. Unlike the UK, however, there is no Australian equivalent of the Reform Party nor of Nigel Farage to replace the Liberal Party as the centre-right alternative in the political marketplace.

Based on their record while in government and the liberal scattering of spending promises during the campaign, the Liberal Party is no longer the alternative party that values enterprise, reward for risk-taking and effort, and personal responsibility. Trade unions are already signalling they will use their power and influence over Labor to stifle free enterprise. It would seem that my aspirational generation’s influence over the social, political, and economic fabric and the direction of Australia has ended. Young people who have been converted into a sense of entitlement to cradle-to-grave government assistance to sustain their modern tech-heavy consumption and work-shy lifestyle will eventually be caught in the trap of bracket creep and be saddled with alarmingly rising levels of public debt. You reap what you sow.

At the same time, the catastrophic scale of defeat may prove a blessing in disguise. A narrow defeat might have reinforced the narrative of not having shifted left enough to win back the inner city elites. Instead the existential crisis (the Liberal Party’s vote share shrunk to 20.8 percent and the Coalition’s altogether was 32.1 percent) opens up the opportunity for renewal of the sensible right, especially as the loveless landslide could easily tip the second-term Albanese government into polling doldrums as has happened in the UK.

The columnist Simon Benson wrote in the Australian on the Monday after Saturday’s shock election results: 

Australia has changed. The Coalition’s existential problem is that, as a political party, it has failed to change with it…It is the Coalition that is now out of touch with Middle Australia, while perhaps not entirely out of step with its values, but certainly its expectations.

Contrast this with former Liberal foreign minister Alexander Downer writing in the same paper on the same day:

The greatness of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Thatcher and even our own Robert Menzies lay not in the quantity of handouts they offered the public with borrowed money but the passion with which they argued the case for their nation’s survival and prosperity. They gave purpose to the nation and the endeavours of its people.

Politics is more than a debate over management. It’s about the contest of ideas over the organising principles around which to structure the political, economic, and social orders. In recent years the political left has been the more successful in winning the values argument across the West. In those countries where populist leaders have confronted the left’s value settings head-on, they have made deep inroads into the political institutions.

Those that run away from the philosophical challenge live to rue another big election loss. Unless the Liberal Party of Australia replaces careerist politician leaders focussed on the spoils of power with conviction politicians committed to a core organising principle and prepared to exercise power to reverse the destructive expansion of welfare and bureaucracy, it will shuffle off-stage into the political sunset for good. 

Rosebuds of Consolation

The outcome of Australia’s election is thus less an affirmation of Albanese and his agenda than a repudiation of the Coalition because it failed to articulate a credible, let alone a compelling, agenda of its own. For a congenital optimist, the May rosebuds of consolation are to be found in the electoral retreat of the Greens. They have exactly zero seats in the House at the time of writing, and at best could end up with just one of four from the previous House. I’ll take these precious few crumbs of comfort.

This is an excerpt from the original republished with permission. You can read the full piece here