The writer is in Australia.
I promised last week to tell readers why I think the only path to victory for conservative political parties is to fight the culture wars. And I foreshadowed this by noting that retreating to just fighting on economic grounds is self-defeating – a healthy economy demands a healthy culture where people understand the benefits of self-reliance, risk taking, delayed gratification and the like. (For the sake of this argument put to one side the fact that the Liberal Party in Australia has no credibility at all on the purely economic terrain, not having run a surplus once in its recent nine-year tenure, being the first of the main parties to attack superannuation [pensions], having printed money and spent like drunken sailors during the pandemic years and so (unbelievably) being in no position to criticise Labour on small-government, thrift-is-important, keep-debt-in-check grounds.)
Another way to put my point is that values matter and that they need to be the basis on which big decisions are made. The Liberal Party instead prefers focus groups and bloodless advisors who disdain the party base. Every U.S. Republican Governor who stood up against lockdowns on principle, on the basis that these massive inroads into civil liberties were unwarranted on the facts, is now politically far better off. Florida’s Ron DeSantis won the 2018 gubernatorial race by just tens of thousands of votes. In 2022 he won a massive landslide; the biggest for a Republican ever. And Florida saw huge numbers move there from other states. Sure, at the time DeSantis made these value-based calls (not to ruin the young by closing schools, not to destroy the small-business sector, not to allow pseudo-vaccine mandates, etc.) he was relentlessly attacked by the Left-wing media (meaning virtually all of it). So he had to learn the data and field hostile questions. And it initially made him less popular with the public. But you believe in certain principles or you don’t. And if you do you act on them. As I said, every Republican Governor who stood up against the lockdownistas is today a big political winner. It would have been the same here in Australia.
The problem is that the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison patently had no values beyond doing what focus groups told him would help in the next election and because of that he tried to ‘out-Labour’ Labour. I still think Malcolm Turnbull was the worst Liberal PM ever, but there is definitely an argument to be made that Morrison was even worse. Name anything the Morrison Government did that could be described as ‘conservative’. Or try to name any policies we conservatives got from nine years of Coalition Governments. I’ll give you Tony Abbott’s stopping the boats, which was in fact an astounding accomplishment. But that’s about it. The universities got worse every year under Coalition Governments. They appointed judges who were on balance barely better than we’d have gotten under Labour, and maybe worse (the Love decision was brought to you by George Brandis appointees, three of the four in the majority which tells you all you need to know, as well as being a knock-out argument against the Voice). Same goes for all appointments including to the Human Rights Commission (whose Commissioners were all Coalition appointees during the pandemic and who didn’t say a single peep, nada, nothing, about the worst inroads on our civil liberties in 300 years – but just wait till someone claiming refugee status comes along with a grievance or there’s a chance for the president to lobby for a bill of rights).
The same goes for the impoverishing Net Zero religion, the fighting against which won the Libs multiple elections till Mr. Morrison (did I remind voters that Morrison was the key player in the Tony Abbott coup?) just decided on his own to throw in the towel on that too. Be honest. The Coalition didn’t fight on any fronts related to our culture at all. It just surrendered to Labour and the ABC worldview, when I would have spent those years defunding or privatising ‘our’ public broadcaster that still lacks a single, solitary conservative presenter or producer on any TV current affairs show. But hey, it’s all just too hard to fight for the current crop of Liberal MPs. If the Libs have ever had a worse cohort of MPs I don’t know when it was. And to be fair, those at the state level are orders of magnitude worse than their federal counterparts. In Queensland the woeful LNP leader Mr. Crisafulli just threw in the towel and signed up to Labour’s treaty lark with its three-year ‘truth-telling’ inquiry. If you’re selling the pass like that you’re not getting my vote. It’s as though Crisafulli is trying to lose the upcoming unloseable Queensland election. Or he is unable to stand up to advisors who buy in fully to the Mark Textor view that the base has nowhere else to go so f— ‘em. Gee, that’s worked really well, hasn’t it?
Look at Europe. Conservative parties that fight the culture wars are winning and winning big. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the continent’s most popular politician domestically. She seeks out culture fights (and realise these fights are ones that well over half the population agrees with such as no biological men in women’s sports or in their loos and a stop to big scale, mass immigration).
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is even tougher on these issues and just keeps winning elections (which the Lefty legacy media tries to paint as undemocratic when it’s just the result they dislike – and notice that their complaint that Orbán gets too much favourable press coverage is laughable when compared to the favourable press coverage that goes to the Democrats and Joe Biden or to the Left in Australia). Ditto conservative parties in Poland. Or in that bastion of social democracy, Sweden. And look at the trends in France and Germany. Meanwhile Britain’s Tories have wasted the huge 2019 Boris/Brexit majority win by becoming more Labour than Labour – the biggest-spending and biggest-taxing outfit since Attlee while caving in on every culture fight going. As a result I’m hoping Rishi Sunak will be destroyed at the next election.
Over in the U.S., the two lasting achievements of Donald Trump (whether he wins in 2024 or not, and I lean to ‘yes, he will’ at the moment) are that he ignored all the great and good and identity politics (a.k.a. ‘got to appoint a woman rather than the most meritorious’) and made superb top Court appointments, the results of which are now clear. And, more importantly, Trump has remade the Republican party. He started a movement that is seeing the ‘wets’ primaried and defeated. This new Republican Party that owes much to Trump most definitely does fight the culture wars. In Australian terms, it would be as though the Libs made a concerted effort to get rid of the Matt Keans of the party, those who either can’t be bothered to fight the culture wars or don’t want to because they agree with Labour and the Greens. Boy do we need a bit of the culture warrior ethos here in this country.
When Labour says “the Libs shouldn’t be fighting on divisive culture issues” what they mean is “we have fought on these issues; we’ve won; and we don’t want them re-opened”.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
But how can you act like a conservative if you have STOPPED being one? All over Europe there is a fightback by politicians with back bone in Italy, and in Poland and Hungary who refuse to accept EU migrant quotas, and Trump showed you don’t need to pander to globalists by withdrawing from the eco socialist Paris Agreement. But to do any of this you need BACKBONE and PRINCIPAL….But the current lot of phony conservatives have NONE.
Absolutely.. and Italy’s Meloni in the pic above is just another globalist posing as a conservative.. all mouth and no skirt.. or trousers..
Well she’s absolutely rubbish regarding immigration. Just one look at this person’s page and all of the video footage demonstrates that. Here they are seemingly getting rid of their passports on the boat to Italy;
https://twitter.com/RadioGenova/status/1678500489867022342
Yes.. she’s back-pedalled on immigration fairly smartish.. her overlords have obviously whispered in her ear..
I disagree. She’s between a rock and hard place. She has to walk a tightrope. If she strays too far towards conservative policies she’ll be ‘removed’. In my estimation she’s doing as best she can so far (with the exception of her apparent unquestioning support of Ukraine). At least Italy is holding out against signing the European Stability Mechanism.
You should – perhaps – one day try to understand that the USA is not the world and hence, that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! doesn’t cut any mustard outside of America. Large parts of Europe suffered from brutal Russian occupation for decades because Stalin – the nicest guy who ever lived on this planet – was such a convenient ally for the human rights fixated western democrats and nobody except lickspittles wants the Russians back.
Well, increasingly I’m finding that Whatever Biden supports must be opposed! is a useful rule-of-thumb for conservatives (with a small c) such as myself.
Meanwhile, somebody who definitely isn’t conservative…..
But seriously, tell me this isn’t Huw Edward’s arse I’m witnessing? Do you think this has been photoshopped by Andrew Tate??
https://twitter.com/Cobratate/status/1679442903104380929
Mmmn.. that Twatter page doesn’t exist any more mogs.. I wonder why ???
Yeah it does. Just click on ”view”. Or maybe it’s only available for account holders…not sure.
The failure goes back decades. Baroness Thatcher, God bless her, failed to fight the culture war and allowed Labour to spend years undermining society while she sorted out the economy. As a result, her Civil Service fast stream allowed far left wing indoctrinated students to race to the top of the Civil Service.
The Tory Party, after the failures of William Hague and Michael Howard decided to become New Labour, then paired up with Nick Clegg’s Blairite LibDems. No one like Baroness Thatcher, Lord Tebbit, Lord Howe, Lord Parkinson, Lord Joseph and others would get close to becoming a Tory MP now. When dear old Roger Scruton was dishonestly framed by The New Statesman, they chucked their greatest modern philosopher to the wolves with a shrug and not even bothering to investigate.
The longstanding Tory failure to tackle the culture war is to the detriment of all of us, but there’s almost no one in the Tory Party remaining who understands culture and philosophy and how they impact politics and economics.
https://www.upday.com/uk/public-sector-pay-offer-what-it-means-for-strikes-budgets-and-inflation?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral
Teachers, doctors, nurses, coppers all to receive 6-7% pay increases.
We mustn’t worry though because none of this will fuel inflation and definitely will not fuel further societal divisions and the pay rises will not even increase the national debt. Truly a magic money tree.
The answer to all ills is self discipline and stoicism.
If you sleep well (ie wake up early), eat well ( ie cook from scratch), exercise regularly, limit screen time and give generously to your community eg volunteer at a Scout group you will be far less likely to suffer from ‘mental health’ problems nor need the welfare state to support your lifestyle.
Empower the individual needs to be the message.
Scott Morrison is surely the most treacherous Australian prime minister of all time. His part in the Covid debacle is yet to be fully investigated and exposed.
For example, Morrison called the ‘pandemic’ before the WHO…and subsequently the Australian international border was closed and Australians subjected to draconian restrictions.
Was Australia a test bed to see how far people could be pushed? Was ‘National Cabinet’ the engine room for tyranny over the people?
It was in National Cabinet that the plan was hatched to initiate the destruction of voluntary informed consent for Covid vaccination, with Scott Morrison overruling Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly and the AHPPC’s advice against compulsory vaccination of aged care workers in June 2021.
Kelly and the AHPPC eventually capitulated to Morrison and National Cabinet, and mandatory vaccination of aged care workers was imposed, precipitating a cascade of vaccination mandates around the country, impacting upon millions of people.
The seriousness of this matter, ie the theft of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, has not yet sunk in for most Australians…
For more background, see my notification/complaint to AHPRA, the regulator of health practitioners, about CMO Paul Kelly violating voluntary informed consent via vaccination mandates:
A majority of Conservative MPs in the UK aren’t Conservatives, let alone conservatives.
Cameron imposed candidates who were effectively left-wing LibDems in safe seat constituencies in order to “deal with” members he called “fuitcakes, loonies and closet racists” or the Turnip Taleban.
Of course the Not-a-Conservative-Party won’t fight the culture wars. You can’t have a fight when both sides are on the same side!
The only option open to us is to vote to destroy the Not-a-Conservative-Party.
I don’t pretend to know anything about Australian politics..but I am a fan of Ex Labour Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who isn’t mentioned here..neither is the Australian Governments views on Ukraine/Russia..and China….which follows the same well worn ‘lock-step’ path of the USA..
This is Keating’s excellent essay that he wrote in relation to the, in my opinion, scurrilous and fear-mongering headlines in Australian newspapers about the ‘red-threat’ from China…
http://www.paulkeating.net.au/shop/item/aukus-statement-by-pj-keating-the-national-press-club-wednesday-15-march-2023
This is a more recent article, giving his opinion about NATO, and in particular, Jens Stoltenberg….”Of all the people on the international stage the supreme fool among them is Jens Stoltenberg, the current Secretary-General of NATO.
Stoltenberg by instinct and by policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen.”
https://johnmenadue.com/natos-provocative-lurch-eastward-and-the-supreme-fool-jens-stoltenberg/
Besides the fact that I agree with him….the fact that every single institution and the MSM is calling him wrong, bad, outdated etc..tells me he is right…
The ‘conservative in name only’ politicians are ‘sitting it out’ because they’re…
Check out the Tory party’s LGBT shock troops, anti Brexiteers, wokists, globalists – probably 60% of the party.
A conservative vote perpetuates the wickedness.
This quote, although it’s written from a US perspective, seems appropriate.
“As we shall learn, massive and illegal immigration has proved a disaster for the idea of American citizenship by lowering wages, straining government services, undermining the sanctity of the law, energizing tribalism, fuelling identity politics, fostering racialism, and importing massive poverty – even as it is deliberately conflated with mostly welcome legal immigration and praised loudest by an elite that knows, and wishes to know, almost nothing about it.”
‘The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America’ by Victor Davis Hanson
Time for Conservatives to Fight the Culture Wars…
Does anyone here seriously believe the ‘Conservatives’ will make any real attempt to fight the culture wars? They don’t even appear to understand the problem, let alone want to fix it.