Morrison’s defeat is a warning for the Tories
The defeat of the Liberal/National government in Australia is a wake-up call for the Tories, a reminder that they do not have a God-given right to rule and, if they cannot deliver for all sides of their coalition, will be on the path to defeat.
In an election that was partly about character, Scott Morrison was portrayed as a “bulldozer” who had exhausted the patience of voters. But Australia is also facing a very familiar cost of living crisis, with mounting bills, stagnant wages and crazy house prices – and its politics are realigning. When working-class voters first abandoned the Australian Labor Party, the death of traditional voting patterns seemed to favour Liberal/National – but now Mr Morrison’s side of the aisle is fracturing, too. The pendulum has swung towards a progressive coalition of Labor, Greens and, crucially, ex-Liberal environmentalists in affluent urban areas, chipping away at Mr Morrison’s traditional constituencies.
On the night, the Australian version of the “Blue Wall” crumbled as well as the Red – and that’s where the Tories are headed, too. It remains to be seen whether we might be in for an early demonstration of this on June 23 when the Conservatives will defend rural Tiverton and urban Wakefield in same-day by-elections. Any gains for the Lib Dems will be good, medium term, for Labour. Sir Keir Starmer’s party doesn’t need a 1997-style, across-the-board landslide to slither into office as head of an economically illiterate, woke coalition, which could even include the SNP. All it needs is the Tories to alienate their own base. Incredibly, Boris Johnson is doing just that.
The Tories have made a stab at challenging the woke advance in the culture wars, but why are our institutions still dominated by the Left? Why is the civil service seeking to erase women? They have failed to deregulate the economy after Brexit, are doing too little to tackle crime, have nothing to say about market-led economic growth and have yet to do anything meaningful to raise post-Covid standards in education. What seem to officials like bright ideas – actually foolish and outdated – are leapt on without philosophical foundation or consideration of the consequences, economic or political. There is a sensible way to address climate change through technology, but instead people are told they must fly less or Low Traffic Neighborhoods are imposed in suburbs. The cost of government failure is passed on to the voters, and done so with an air of Puritan smugness.
The notion that some clever trade-off in votes will win an election, punishing the Blue Wall to tempt the Red over to a Tory version of social democracy, is fantasy. And everyone will lose if the end result is a far-Left coalition determined to run Britain into the ground.