I’ve asked this question before, and I’ll ask it again: why do right-of-centre politicians want to go into politics? If the answer is nothing more than ‘to win elections’, then notice what follows from that value-free vacuum. You can get an Angela Merkel, who won election after election, all while opening up the country’s borders to young, single men from Afghanistan and the Middle East, who overall lacked any obvious sympathy or liking for the whole array of Western values. How has that worked out for Germany? And she caved in to close Germany’s nuclear power plants in her rush to board the renewable express to Disasterville. Relatedly, she ignored the first-term President Trump’s warnings about the dangers of going all-in buying gas from Russia. The result of that energy policy madness is that power in Germany (here in Oz too) costs up to three times what it does in the US. And Germany’s economy-driving manufacturing base is imploding. But hey, Merkel won a lot of elections, right?
Or look at Britain’s Conservative Party. Why did David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak (I blinked and so missed Liz Truss) go into politics? Because they did an awfully good job of winning elections, didn’t they? The Tories were in power under these Prime Ministers from May 2010 until July 2024. That’s over 14 consecutive years of Tory governments. And they gave us what? They signed up to (without campaigning on) a crippling Net Zero under Boris. David Cameron didn’t reverse a single thing that Tony Blair had done to ruin the UK constitution and supercharge an imperial, unelected judiciary – instead, Cameron joined in the fun and made things even worse (think of his Judicial Appointments Act, for just one example). Theresa May would have been more at home in the Liberal Democrat Party. These 14 years saw Britain totally gut its armed forces, and the numbers of serving personnel plummeted. Government debt and taxes ended up, by the end of Rishi’s tenure, at the highest since just after the Second World War. And the Tories oversaw a massive, no – steroidally huge – influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal. As for the latter, the Tory Party did not have the cojones to leave the European Convention in order to stop the illegal boats. Too many in the brain-dead party room thought this would mean the Tories were against liberal democratic values – as though Canada, Australia and New Zealand somehow didn’t exist (because none of those dominions are party to this woeful convention that’s been hijacked by the European judges with their suicidal empathy). Oh, and don’t get me started on how the Conservatives have sat idly by as the scope for free speech in the UK has shrunk and constricted in the name of trying to prop up a discredited and broken multiculturalism. (J.D. Vance is right, in other words.) And I’ll pass over in infuriated silence (sort of) the brutal fact that it was the Tories, yes the Tories, who were the lockdown thugs who aped the Chinese politburo and oversaw the biggest inroads on people’s civil liberties in a couple of centuries. (That’s true here in Australia too, of course. Which is why Scott Morrison goes down in my books as the equal-worst Liberal PM – with Malcolm Turnbull – in our country’s history.) At least Boris delivered Brexit, though he didn’t have the cojones to make it a full and effective one.
Again, though, those British Tories won a lot of elections, didn’t they? That can happen when you opt for the smallest of small target election strategies. It can work and you get elected and re-elected – until your party base starts to dessert you. (See Germany. See Britain. The uniquely bad voting system makes disciplining your own side of politics much harder here.)
Let’s ask a different question to the one with which I began: why do we, the voters, want right-of-centre politicians to go into politics? And to that, I can promise you that the answer is never ‘just to win elections’. No, we want the conservatives we elect to do substantive things that help make Australia a better country. Sure, we’re a broad church, and so what those things are is moderately contestable. Reasonable righties will disagree. But none of us likes this woeful strategy of the advisor class that amounts to ‘let’s park ourselves an inch to the right of Labor and move ever further left with them as they head towards the Greens’.
And that brings me to Peter Dutton. Is he a gigantic improvement on Turnbull and Morrison? You bet he is. Do I want him to win the upcoming election? I most certainly do. And I think he will too. But all that readily conceded, it is infuriating to watch the Team Dutton advisors – are any of them over 29 years old? – adopt a small target approach. Net Zero? They won’t pledge to leave, even though this is the most propitious time in decades to call that bulldust for what it is – with the US now joining China and India in ignoring its idiocies and so making anything we do here to impoverish ourselves and virtue-signal completely meaningless and downright stupid. Dutton’s advisors are likewise completely clueless about the importance of free speech and sign the Libs up to woeful freedom-infringing laws so that we have to hope for the US to strong-arm us into a sane position as regards free speech and to gainsay our woeful eSafety Commissioner. Immigration, you say? Softly, softly, softly is the Dutton Team’s approach. The ABC and making those who want to pay for this propaganda outlet do so with their own money? Don’t worry, we’ll look at that after the election, old boy.
It’s almost as though the Dutton advisors only care about winning an election a la Merkel and the British Tories rather than – you know – achieving stuff. Well, as paid advisors, that’s probably all they do care about. But politicians need to care about achieving substantive outcomes. Legacies matter. And that means you need a mandate. Our dysfunctional Senate is already asymmetrical in approving big spending, not small. And more regulation, not less. If there is to be any hope of changing Australia’s downward trajectory, then Dutton needs to seek an expansive mandate.
I know some conservatives have near terminal cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But Trump sought a stunningly wide mandate, promising an array of things conservatives love: from fighting the culture wars, cutting government, ending wars, shutting the border, bringing back free speech and taking on the transgender lobby. And he won. And he’s doing them all. And right now, Trump’s popularity is at an all-time high, an approval score of 54%. And that approval is highest of all amongst young people, at a staggering 60% amongst the 18 to 29-year-olds. They want change most of all, not mealy-mouthed quibbling.
Dutton needs to come out with clear, explicit pledges to vastly cut immigration and to fight the culture wars (a vote-winning issue, I promise you). I’d also like to see him revisit Net Zero and promise to get out. Win on that platform, and then it’s possible to take on our unrepresentative Senate. Come on, Peter. Enough of this British Tory-like squeamishness and small target cautiousness.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University.
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To start on a lighter note. Yesterday LS reader TheFacistCoronaFraud took exception to a video claiming to ‘factcheck’ Mike Yeadon.
In checking the link the video was overwhelmingly downvoted (most unusual for YouTube) and the comments are universally in support of Mike.
Several other readers expressed an interest in making the factcheckers day worse so attached is an update before it sinks into oblivion.
He’s quite articulate but just makes sweeping generalisations which fail to refute Mike Yeadons work.
(To be fair the main subtitle errors “Mikey Eden” are not his fault, that’s YouTube’s effort).
Winston Smith was a fact checker in 1984
Fascists’ predictions prove totally wrong. Lying Fascist tyrants contradict themselves every couple of weeks. Nobody notices. Good work, Ministry of Truth.
For globalists. The past is fluid, but the future is fixed.
Pointless trivial question, but I wonder if there is anybody actually called Winston Smith?
I really must try and get a life.
Oh, sorry, I forgot, the government won’t let me!
Any zombie would do just that
‘Home visits for essential carers’
I was initially confused by this rather good but sad Guardian article until I realised ‘essential carer’ = loving relative coming to visit.
So it has come to pass that a petition (signed by 225k to date) needs to be raised so that limited visiting rights by a single relative has to be enshrined in law.
In many cases it will be that relative who is using their life savings or home equity to pay the bills and wages of the little Hitlers running some of these ‘care homes’.
£50,000 a year to be kept in solitary confinement.
Get your elderly relative into jail. It’s free, and prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners is illegal.
Covid Anxiety Syndrome, Telegraph.
Don’t expect sympathy from me; stay home, wear you face panties, jump out of my way in the shop but don’t use it as an excuse to throw an extended sickie when told to go back to the office.
The Telegraph is giving this nonsense a veneer of respectability by quoting a couple of professors who originally identified and named Covid 19 Anxiety Syndrome, no doubt eyeing a lucrative lecture series and a few books in the future.
I do have sympathy for the children of CAS ‘sufferers’ however.
You underestimate the induced mental illness. Don’t let Covid make you blind about the reality of it – it’s serious.
Agreed RickH, Lockdown induced Repetative Behaviour Syndrome, a form of Autism would not be much fun.
Another crime for bozo, ferguson and the rest to answer for.
The profs are just ensuring the grants continue to roll in. They are just making sure the research-granters know they’ll publish any facts they pay for.
‘Other countries are restarting travel, so should we.’ Daily Mail.
Downvoted commenter Oldlandtory might have hit the nail on the head without realising it.
“All international travel should be banned on environmental grounds. The mass population of the world should only be allowed to move within their own country or region for work”
Whoops, millions on the move,encouraged by the UN
‘The absurd cost of testing for holidaymakers’ Telegraph.
We have all read tales of woe from returning travellers stuck in limbo because the results of their overpriced tests have not arrived and then being refused a refund.
How some of these cowboy companies got to be on the governments approved list will come to rival the Cash For Curtains imbroglio.
The Telegraph reports that Grant Shapps has been ‘cracking down’ to reduce the price of these tests from £300 to sixty quid.
Dippy Doo, a week or so ago when some MP was complaining about the expense of universal twice weekly testing he guestimated that these would each cost the government a tenner.
Why anyone should ever believe a word perpetually-smirking one-time get-rich-quick scheme merchant Michael Green, aka Sebastian Fox, aka Grant Shapps says is a mystery.
Anyone who wants a stick stuck up their noses and mouth’s weekly and for travel (and pay for the privilege) must be mentally ill, deranged and totally brainwashed. I’m off in my private jet with none of this hassle to a secret island.
‘£322m on adverts till 2022’
Hugo Talks (YouTube) is always spot on. No surprise they took down his previous channel.
We may not like YouTube (except for the orangutan vids) but it does have way more reach than other video platforms.
I completely missed this Hugo Talks Some More shoutout to Lockdown Sceptics last week
‘China Weibo mocks India Covid ‘crisis’ BBC
Apparently showing a Chinese rocket launch alongside Indian workers in Hazmat suits burning bodies is mocking and offensive. I hold no view on that.
Has anyone yet told the great British public that burning bodies in al fresco cremation is normal in India, it’s what Hindus do with their dead, covid or otherwise.
Gates divorce ? Do tell, I’m not generally into celebrity gossip but would make an exception for those two.
Ed, just seen it on Hugo Talks Some More YouTube.
the comments below the Mail article were hilarious
‘has she tried turning him off and on again’ etc
I can’t see a link to that Mail article but will seek it out later.
They don’t count as mere celebrities, they are politicians.
Plenty of people are speaking out against lockdown and coerced vaccinations – especially of children
…but it hasn’t made it into the narrative yet. The narrative is driven by the government and the media of which the BBC is the most important
How do we get the narrative changed? He who pays the piper calls the tune. Its time for the oil companies to get off their arses, get their wallets out and start doing what they’ve always been accused of. Who’s the boss here? Big Pharma or Big Oil? Only one way to find out…
Big oil is over, they are well invested in renewables and the Great Reset. In fact, they are the primary drivers of carbon neutral. Trump was the last gasp of any such (outmoded) movement. Any counter movement will come from a faction of the tech industries, software, retail or from the people and political class itself. Oh, and possibly the military or services.
The first question is who is the more evil one of the two?!
David Thunder sums it up eloquently and precisely.
The only wird I would delete is ‘harsh’ – any flu season will do, I firmly expect a repeat of Fall/Winter 20/21, each year until the money has run out completely, aka the currencies been reset and government debts been eliminated through hyperinflation.
Someone also suggested to remove ‘peacefully’.
I won’t endorse that, yet, but doubt it can be achieved without doing so.
The relative liberty in the UK masks what is going on in other countries like Germany or the USA.
Wonder if Sterling will survive
“aka the currencies been reset and government debts been eliminated through hyperinflation.”
Belief in that is like belief in masks and lockdowns. A mistake in thinking.
Government debt is a Gilt. A Gilt is a saving instrument – held largely by pension funds. Therefore all that is happening is people are saving a lot, paying back their private debts and generally improving their balance sheets.
The hyperinflation you are looking for will not happen because all government is doing is offsetting saving and debt repayment. When people are saving, not spending, it’s very difficult for prices to go up.
It all becomes clear if you think of it as private saving, not government borrowing. Just as you do with a bank where the bank is borrowing from you when you save with them. Yet you never hear about the terrible levels of bank borrowing causing hyperinflation.
So you think people REALLY are over-saving and that’s pushing interest rates below the lending risk level?!?
They’re dividing assets. That’s all. It isn’t very exciting. At a certain point, joint wealth is more of a liability than individual. It’s just sound business.
That’s the interesting thing in itself. You don’t normally divide assets unless you feel there are potential threats.
The distance from your head to your elbow is a lot less than from your head to your hand. Just sayin…
“Rosa Silverman investigates why some cling fearfully to the isolation of lockdown for the Telegraph”
You don’t have to agree with everything in that article to see a vivid illustration of how the Goebbels and Mengele Memorial Brigade (SPI-B) has induced a wave of illness far worse than actual Covid.
It cites some extreme examples – but ask yourself how familiar are the basic symptoms.
Was in a queue this morning, outdoors, standing as I’d normally stand. Woman, about 40, in front turns round and demands that I retreat because she ‘doesn’t feel comfortable’. I say, in that case she can go and stand behind me. She doesn’t. Apparently, the risk of death from my polluted proximity is less terrifying than the risk of losing her place in the queue.
CCP’s-China mocking cremation in India is horrible. But the backlash misses the point. Most of the cremation were not alleged covid19 victims. India has suffered due to lockdowns and excess deaths are due to lockdowns.
Epidemic in India has passed (it reached heard immunity at which point epidemic began to slow down and then it finally stopped in January, 2021 if not before). Made-up stories of new variants that are way more deadly and can bypass acquired natural immunity are (sorry) just crap. If people cared about India they would care about several hundred children dying each day (and every year) of diarrhea and tuberculosis (mainly children and younger people) and a lot more people dying in 2020. and 2021. because of the lockdowns.
Another point that is missed about China is not so much that it hid the information about the virus in the beginning (the virus probably was all over he world in Q4 of 2019), the point is that China intensly propagandized lockdowns at home and all over the world.
Just listening to the World at One on Radio 4 (I don’t know why I do it to myself – I really don’t.) And I quote… “India has reached 20 million cases – the only country other than the United States to do so…” Failing entirely to mention that their population is more than 4 times that of The States.
Apparently it’s the same in US.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1389556856419405826
ps. interesting article in Indian newspaper (from the above tweet): “30% of beds occupied with people with mild symptoms who don’t need them. they are using political connections to get the medical care.”
So the people whose health has been severely damaged over the 2020. by lockdowns and who suffer now from various causes including any number of respiratory pathogens (also possibly including now endemic covid19) and/or high pollution in Indian mega-cities – there’s no room for them in the Indian health system that was never able to provide good care for everyone in the first place (otherwise there would not be so many deaths due to diarrhea, tuberculosis, etc.)
*the same in US regarding media hysteria about India.
The link third from the bottom should not be buried.
Think about the findings of this poll. If you can, try to picture how massive these numbers really are, how vast the levels of misery the lockdowns caused really is ….And lockdown skeptics are considered “cruel” and “selfish.” Excerpts from poll findings:
“U.S.-based polling company Gallup, which surveyed 300,000 people across 117 countries, found that half of those with jobs earned less because of COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. This translated to 1.6 billion adults globally, it said.
“Worldwide, these percentages ranged from a high of 76% in Thailand to a low of 10% in Switzerland,” said researchers in a statement.
The poll also showed that one in three people surveyed lost their job or business due to the pandemic – translating into just over one billion people globally.
My comment: 1-in-3 people! Over ONE BILLION people globally.
“…. The COVID-19 crisis has hit workers across the world, particularly women, who are over-represented in low-paid precarious sectors such as retail, tourism and food services.
“A study by the international charity Oxfam on Thursday said the pandemic had cost women around the world $800 billion in lost income.
“These figures also varied across nations with lower income countries such as the Philippines, Kenya and Zimbabwe showing more than 60% of respondents lost their jobs or businesses, compared to ….13% in the United States.”
My Comment: So “only” 13 percent of Americans lost their jobs or businesses …. which is “only” 43 million (!) Americans
Important point: It wasn’t the virus, which poses significant health risks only to a small percentage of the population (those who have largely already lived a full life), it was the response to the virus that cause this mind-boggling scale of economic misery and carnage. Where’s the compassion for these 43 million Americans … and BILLIONS of people around the globe?
The political and bureaucratic “leaders” who mandated the lockdowns that produced this economic devastation are celebrated as enlightened, as more caring and and “compassionate” than those who questioned all these “lockdown” measures. But who really has more “blood on their hands?”
“First do no harm” is the main tenet of the Hippocratic Oath.
Who can plausibly argue that these lockdowns didn’t create massive harm to massive numbers of world inhabitants? And this harm is still being inflicted on people today.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-global-workers/one-in-two-people-globally-lost-income-due-to-the-pandemic-gallup-idUSKBN2CK0BX
Has she caught him with something he shouldn’t have, like “missing” kids on his trans-legal private moving island AKA “yacht”?