Can you pass the PM test?
Power failure for both leaders
❝Both leaders now are highly unlikely to last. Turnbull has been on poll death row all year...
HERE’S a quiz every clueless Liberal politician should be made to take following British Prime Minister Theresa May’s humiliation in last week’s election.
It’s called: Guess That Prime Minister. Is it May or our own Malcolm Turnbull?
Question one: which prime minister called an early election, not in the national interest but in the belief it would be of personal political benefit?
Two: which prime minister called a campaign that dragged on for more than seven weeks when voters are screaming for leadership, not politics?
Three: which prime minister campaigned lazily, as if the result was in the bag?
Four: which prime minister assumed personal popularity, and built the campaign around this rather than around the political party?
Five: which prime minister, lacking any real political conviction, parroted meaningless slogans, such as “Jobs and Growth” or “Strong and Stable”?
Six: which prime minister seemed unable to connect to voters?
Seven: which prime minister gave supporters little to fight for, as if it was enough to just manage things better than the Opposition?
Eight: which prime minister has stood on both sides of policy issues that matter to the party’s conservative base?
Nine: which prime minister enraged that conservative base by promising to snatch the savings of the old?
Oh, and the tenth question, which helps to answer all the above: which prime minister was advised by the Australian campaigning outfit led by Sir Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor?
You got it. The answer to all 10 questions is: Both.
It is both Malcolm Turnbull, who lost 14 seats last year and was left clinging to power by just one; and also Theresa May, who in seven weeks turned a 20-point lead over Labour into a result so disastrous that she’s been forced into minority government.
Both leaders now are highly unlikely to last. Turnbull has been on poll death row all year, and May’s authority is shattered.
So what lessons must our own politicians learn from May’s disaster, caused entirely by calling an election three years early, and then campaigning like Turnbull in skirts?
The biggest, one which you’d think a politician would never need to be reminded of but which they often forget, is “Don’t take the voters for granted.”
Don’t carry on as though their vote is in your pocket and you don’t need to dance to their tune.
How often have we seen voters punish prime ministers who behave as though they are our masters rather than our servants?
When Paul Keating preened like an emperor, with his big mouth, he got smashed.
When John Howard imposed workplace laws without first putting them to voters, he got smashed.
When Julia Gillard broke her key promise, “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”, she got smashed.
When Tony Abbott broke promises, he got smashed, too.
Calling an election on the lazy assumption that you’ll win because you’re popular and the other bloke is a dud is the same sort of sin. It’s telling voters you’ve got them bluffed.
There’s a big risk voters will call you on that, just to remind you who’s really boss.
That danger doubles if you then campaign as if it’s all about you. Remember Turnbull ditching the Liberal logo for his own “Malcolm Turnbull Coalition Team” seal?
And if you believe in little and campaign as though you should be rewarded for just being you — well, that really is asking for a kicking.
If you have angered even your own supporters, who is left to defend you? That’s why warmist Turnbull is crazy, following last week’s Finkel report, to now be pushing for another kind carbon tax on power stations.
Unfortunately there’s one more lesson from May’s humiliation and the rise to near-power of Jeremy Corbyn, the most Left-wing and unappealing leader British Labour has had in years.
That famous slogan of former US president Bill Clinton’s campaign team — “It’s the economy, stupid” — must be rewritten for the high-welfare West.
The slogan is now: “It’s the handouts, stupid.”
Corbyn promised vast new spending to people hungry for other people’s money, and it worked so well — especially with the young and feckless — that many voted even for this former IRA supporter.
Labor will have seen all that, and we will now pay, in both senses.
The battle at our next election will even more clearly be between the Liberals, without a heart-felt cause, and Labor, promising a waterfall of spending.
It will be the headless vs the brainless. Either way, greed wins and the country will keep going broke.