Do we give the new Labor Government a go, or do we sharpen the knives from the get-go and cut loose?

Labor has won government four times since 1972, half a century ago now.

WHITLAM

The incoming leaders before Albo were Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd. All three were, arguably, elected because people wanted to throw out tired and/or disappointing governments.

In the case of ScoMo, his legacy has recently been described by the Editor of The Spectator Australia as “a joke”.

They were not dispatched because voters were embracing the alternative with relish. Only one of the three incoming Labor PMs figured out how to govern for the good of the country.

Choose your model, Albo.

The Prime Minister has landed in Australia, at last, and has set about visiting the dismal flood zones. (And no, they were not the result of climate change, Albo; google ENSO and La Nina).

Some of his overseas travels and endeavours were necessary, and even, perhaps, fruitful. Who cares what Macron thinks of us, really? Was it worth $800m?

There is an argument that the French visit was needed. But the secret flying visit to war torn Ukraine? This is Wag-the-Dog virtue signalling, nothing less.

Two problematic, warring ex-communist States full of bad actors a world away, with historical blood on all their hands and each run by thugs hardly require our input from down under. Pure optics. Solving a problem that doesn’t require our meagre, unnecessary contribution.

Upon his return, and meeting with a NSW Premier who is grimly determined to consort with any and all political opponents, Albo stated that Australians were suffering from “conflict fatigue”.

No, we simply have a base expectation that governments will work together to solve problems. This isn’t a political priority. It is just core business, and neither he nor Dominic Perrottet should expect us to be thrilled that they get along.

Politicians love to win easy plaudits for just doing their day jobs.

No, Albo has far bigger fish to fry, if he expects to win the favour of voters, including the nearly 70 per cent of us who didn’t vote for him and who have little enthusiasm for his reign.

Hang on, there is a clue. Perhaps the Prime Minister might reflect on why the “Seinfeld election” happened, why a huge number of voters didn’t even turn up, and why we are so jacked off with all of them.

Forget the mandate nonsense, Albo. You do not have one. You will have to earn it.

Four priorities suggest themselves.

One. Define what your Party stands for now. When able journeymen like Joel Fitzgibbon, who almost alone in the Labor Party, has exercised his mind on this question (with considerable depth and reflection), felt the need to exit the building, you have a problem.

Blue Dog Democrats in America and people like Paul Embery in the United Kingdom have sussed the essential problem you have.

DESPISE

You are now a metropolitan Left-liberal party. You may well be ignoring this. Labor appears these days to despise its base. (A little like the Liberals, one might say).

You have become a Party of globalist progressives. Your own former base utterly detests this, by the way. Perhaps you don’t care. You should.

Your primary vote is now embarrassing. You slid into government on not much at all. Are you happy about this, deep down?

Two. Govern competently. Honestly. Wisely. Just look at ScoMo, or the toxic and largely unlamented Boris Johnson.

Yes, these two apologies for prime ministerial talent each ignored their philosophical reasons for being.

But, just as embarrassingly, they chose to ignore the core requirements of good governance and executive management.

Or think of the case of Giovanni Domenic Barilaro. Remember the pub test. Voters beyond the beltway ultimately smell these things.

A useful tip. Keep a goodly distance from health bureaucrats and the medical industrial complex. Obtain advice liberally from a range of sources on the first order issues.

Three. Be humble and remain grounded. Recognise that you belong to a political class that is remote from normal people.

Choose the latter as your best friends. People who have been crushed by COVID bulldust (being revealed now as the truth outs), who want their lights to come on each day, who want to have good jobs, who expect fiscal continence, who don’t wish to worship and seek endless forgiveness from those whose land we now inhabit, who feel their living standards are dropping and who don’t give a rat’s about your remote, lofty and utopian preoccupations.

Most people in Australia do not share the obsessions of Senator David Pocock of the Australian Capital Territory, who represents the people who, alas, advise you on a daily basis, but does not know or seem to care about real people.

Remember the outsiders. The noble and struggling people your Party once counted as your core supporters.

Four. Remember Bob Hawke. Yes, it’s a cliché, but do at least try to govern for all of us, not just the voters of Marrickville and the Wilkinson-FitzSimons set.

BAKED-IN

I wonder, if today, Hawke’s consensus style and intent could work, given the now baked-in positions of our twenty-first century tribes.

But please give it a crack. It is tempting to give your woke, greenie allies and Party base tidbits in the form of policy preferment, jobs for the girls and the odd boy and rhetorical bombast.

Resist the temptation if you wish to be a consequential prime minister. And I hope that to be such a prime minister is top of mind for you.

Twelve years of Tories. Nine years of Liberals. What will they be remembered for?

For conservatives, the task of approaching Albo should recall the sound advice of the British Tory leader Harold Macmillan.

When asked his greatest challenge in government, he reportedly replied, “events, dear boy, events”.

Albo’s government will largely be defined by how it copes, not what its ministers and members reflexively believe.

Certainly, performance will be front and centre in the minds of voters, come the election due in 2025.

Let us judge them on how they govern, even though most of us hate what they earnestly profess. Tribal Liberals will instinctively seek to condemn the new government.

But the Liberals have an embarrassingly awful record to defend, given the performance of their governments since 2013.

The Liberal rulers monstrously defenestrated the last decent man to lead them, and then accepted and endorsed successors who were, respectively, an impostor and a meagre chancer. This is not a record to be defended. A joke, indeed.

All this said, I have little optimism about the incoming government. Not because of any personal failings on Albo’s part, but rather because the political class which he represents is now so debauched.

Modern politics is all about power, attaining and retaining it. And about ideology and its associated facile narratives.

The Left has abandoned its core operating principle, of defending the interests of the working class. The modern Left, if it can even be called that, has abandoned its noble, if often misguided, mission.

GLOBALISTS

Expect new left ideology from Albo, simultaneously arrogant, ill-informed and irrelevant, and disposed to crush its opponents, to inform the actions of the new government. Not just because of its leaders, progressives, feminists, greenies and globalists all.

Remember that politics are downstream from culture. And the culture, with all of its megaphones, is cheering for Albo to be not a Hawke but to be a combo of Whitlam, updated, and Rudd/Gillard, Daniel Andrews and Mark McGowan.

A Party leaning in to authoritarianism in the pursuit of what are seen by the elites as noble causes, whether they be public health safetyism or climate alarmism.

And ever steered by a woke bureaucracy and a corporate class (led by the media and the universities) whose default position is one of progressivism and the abandonment of centrism, realism and rigour. This all suggests a government not of its (meagre) voters but of noisy elites.

So, by all means, Albo, attend to our “conflict fatigue”. Work with State governments. Cuddle Dom.