JUST as it was with the recent Israeli election, the Left-wing commentariat who dominate the mainstream media were convinced of and predicting (right up to the last minute) a Labor landslide in the Australian elections. Oh dear. The win that is now a certainty for Scott Morrison, Australia’s traditional conservative Prime Minister, and his Liberal-National Coalition has come as a terrible shock to them. He defied them all, leading with 77 seats – only 76 are needed for a majority – and at the time of writing there are still more results to come in.
What’s the lesson to be taken from it? Well, as Tom Switzer puts it in the Wall Street Journal: ‘There’s nothing like a shock election result to force media sophisticates to eat their words. The triumph of the center-right Liberal-National Coalition government in Australia has caused plenty of verbal indigestion.’
Voters, this time in Australia, have shocked the media with a result that echoes the Brexit and Donald Trump victories in 2016. Politicians will ignore them at their peril. And no, re-education of the idiot masses isn’t the answer.
John Fund, writing for the National Review, says the result has lessons for the US. It has lessons for the UK too – not least for a Conservative Party here that seems more concerned with placating the Left and the EU than with standing firm on what should be their conservative principles. (If members of the Conservative Party are uncertain what those are, they can check TCW for Sir Roger Scruton’s explanation which we have been running over the last few days. Here is the first part.)
The arrogant and brutal reaction from supporters of Australia’s opposition Labor party, which Fund describes as seeming not to be able ‘to decide whether Australia’s electorate is stupid, evil, or both’, is not the way they should go.
It is, however, already apparent in the Remainer intolerance increasingly in evidence here in the media, as in the immoderate language of Michael Heseltine, and on the streets where Remainer protesters have tried to impede Brexit Party rallies and the democratic process.
There is nothing admirable about those attitudes.
The other lesson for British politicians is Australian voters’ rejection of, as Fund says, ‘a sweeping Labor-party platform that urged Australia to move in a dramatically leftward direction on everything from higher taxes on retirement income to greater benefits for indigenous people to an ambitious program to reduce carbon emissions by 45 per cent from 2005 levels over the next decade.’
Labor was heavily promoting renewable energy and electric vehicles; a so-called Green New Deal. Ring any bells? Irrationally grounded and irresponsibly implemented policies. Voters in Australia however have proved to have their feet on the ground.
You can read Fund’s full article here.
