by JOHN RUDDICK – WESTERN politics moves in cycles between Left and Right. Some cycles are longer than others.
A cycle comes to an end when the leadership of the dominant political outlook goes too far. The Right ran the West from the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 until the US mid-terms in 2006.
- Australia has a congested field of minor Right Parties jostling for a breakthrough.
- The Liberal Party seems to consider the minor Right a nuisance.
- That will soon change.
During that period even nominally Left of centre governments such as Bob Hawke’s and Bill Clinton’s were firmly Right-wing compared to administrations of their Parties in the past.
It came to an end when the Right cheered on the disastrous regime-change wars across the Middle East and the middle shifted firmly Left.
SWINGING
Again, even when the period since has had Right of centre governments (like Malcolm Turnbull’s and Scott Morrison’s) they were firmly Left-wing compared to previous Liberal Party governments.
It feels like the cycle is swinging back to the Right. If so, it is because the Left has gone too far with all their woke garbage and the middle has shifted Right.
What is interesting with this swing is in many places it is bypassing the traditional Parties on the Right and going to new entrants.
All around the Western world we are witnessing an erosion in the support of centre-Right Parties that have over the past several decades often formed governments.
Sometimes this erosion is slow and sometimes it is abrupt. Sometimes the traditional Party of government on the Right remains the most viable Party to form government – but they are doing so on a reduced primary vote and dependent on others.
Minor Parties on the Right are hopeful of becoming major Parties. This trend is in its early stages in Australia so buckle up as the next decade should be interesting.
The UK held an election last July. The Conservative Party won 23.7 per cent of the vote. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party won 14.3 per cent but only a handful of seats thanks to their First Past the Post voting system.
Since that election there have been multiple national opinion polls – and Reform is now polling higher than both the Conservatives and Labour.
In Germany, I had been foolish enough to believe what the mainstream media had told me for several years that Alternative for Germany (AfD) is borderline Nazi sympathetic.
It didn’t take too much digging to see that AfD is an impressive Party with an impressive leader, Alice Weidel.
The traditional Right of centre Party of government in France is the now named Republicans – and they have collapsed and are on the endangered species list.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is now easily the dominant Party on the Right. It’s a similar story across Europe.
Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy replaced the old Right and she is now PM. The Swedish Democrats too are surging.
At the 2021 general election they won 17.5 per cent of the voting (third place) and are in coalition government.
Donald Trump performed an internal coup by permanently banishing the Bushes, Cheneys and Romneys.
In Argentina, Javier Milei has not only performed a political miracle in being elected president from a minor Party but is now demonstrating to the world the upsides of a radically libertarian government.
HYSTERIA
In New Zealand the libertarian ACT Party won one seat out of 120 in 2017. In 2020 the traditional centre Right Party, The Nationals, went along with Jacinda Ardern’s COVID-19 hysteria but ACT did not – and they won 10 seats.
At the 2023 NZ election ACT won 11 and are a particularly positive influence in a coalition government with The Nationals.
At the last federal election in Australia the Liberals and Nationals won 35.7 per cent of the primary vote and a motley crew of minor Right parties won just over 12 per cent.
Australia’s voting system has two features that the US and UK do not – preferential voting and proportional representation.
Both make the pathway easier for a minor Party on the Right to become more significant.
Preferential voting allows a voter to effectively vote twice. They can “Vote 1” for their very favourite Party and if that Party doesn’t win then they can make a list of their preferred Parties thereafter.
This more accurately captures the democratic will of the voters. It also gives voters confidence that they are not wasting their vote by voting for their favourite Party who may not be likely to win.
Proportional representation in our senate and State upper houses is also helpful for minor parties – and again fairer.
Take the NSW Legislative Council and its 42 members. Each four years, half (ie 21) are elected and the electorate is the entire State.
If a Party can secure around three per cent of the State-wide voter, they are quite likely to win a seat.
INGREDIENTS
This means that three per cent of the State gets a voice in parliament but three per cent in the UK or US does not.
So, all the ingredients are on the table for a minor Right Party to become a force of national significance.
The Labor Party doesn’t like the Greens, but Labor has been smart enough to accept that there will always be a 10-15 per cent vote on the minor Left and have helped curate their rise via preferences etc.
The Liberal Party has, however, failed to recognise the significance of the even larger minor Right vote.
The Liberal Party seems to consider the minor Right a nuisance. I expect that to soon change.
Australia has a congested field of minor Right Parties jostling for the breakthrough.
This cannot continue and the Libertarian Party has an outstretched hand of collaboration.PC
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is surging, and gaining increasing acceptance. There is increasing talk of conservative liberals going across to join the Nationals, which would leave the liberal left in NSW to die on the vine, as their unappealing offer is reflected in the party’s plummeting membership. The liberal left is all about control, factionalism and patronage, and it’s no longer an albatross that mainstream libs can carry.
Whilst the liberal left shrilly claim that the conservatives are unelectable and that to move to the right is electoral death, these premises are a tiresome nonsense, as National Party members rarely lose their seats, and hard working conservative liberals such as Andrew Hastie and Phil Thompson have converted marginal seats into safe seats. Conversely, the likes of moderates Jason Falinski and Trent Zimmerman lost safe seats over several terms.
One Nation is a comfortable fit for most conservatives, with whom to exchange preferences and join in coalition. The likes of Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts number amongst parliament’s most productive members. Contrarily the liberal moderates could find their natural home with the Greens and Labor left, but not with the likes of more sensible labor premiers such as Peter Malinauskus, who is an excellent servant of his state.
Exactly on point! When a Party crafts a principled narrative and follows through with corresponding action to reduce the intrusions of Government and have faith (based on the facts of History!) in free markets and free peoples, they win elections. Farage, Milei, Meloni, Trump, Abbott…..
I’m with the Libertarians but PHON would be my second preference.
For all the talk about getting the Liberals back on their feet, the party still looks like that dead horse that a few people won’t stop flogging.
It is a pity that, over the last 50 years of Australian politics, that Centre-right parties win mostly because of dissatisfaction with flawed Leftist economics that eventually ruin people’s lives and pocket-books. The Centre-right mostly wins by default and not by positive conviction in coherent classical liberal policies. These lessons are soon forgotten and the liberal reforms of Hawke, Thatcher and Reagan are now a distant memory.