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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Suggest you read Isobel Hardman”s “Why Do We Get the Wrong Politicians”
After Brexit and a landslide victory the Conservatives had a huge mandate. They then squandered it by doing the total opposite of that which they claimed they would do. It was a massive betrayal and political suicide. Hence, the Conservatives are now in the political wilderness.
With the advent of Reform I believe they are now irrelevant. Never forgive, never forget.
Reform are only 2 inches to the right of Labour these days. Sir Ego Nigel isn’t going to do much of the things that people really want, and would vote for. Labour will win again in 2029 because there is no serious alternative to centre left Marxism. And the centre now originates in the far leftisphere. So being to the right of that paradigm is still socialism.
I’ve read that there has been a change of emphasis from Farage and maybe some specific differences with Lowe regarding deportation of illegals and their families, but I was not aware Reform had officially changed any of their policies as stated in their manifesto. That said, can any of them be trusted to stick by those policies?
Farage appears to have softened his views on immigration.
I think there is only a discussion to be had on legal migration, and seasonal visa’s.
Why is there even a discussion on illegal immigration, criminal or otherwise, the big clue is in the first word!
If so-called Asylum Seekers are entering UK from France, why is not France processing their Asylum application? This is a rhetorical question obviously!
What specifically did he say?
My starting point for legal migration would be to stop it now, completely. I am open to arguments but there has been so much those arguments would need to be compelling for me to change my mind.
The situation with Rupert Lowe is not a good look, it has the air of a fit up!
Time will tell, and maybe he is all they claim he is, but the timing seems a little suspect, and the whole thing could be deeply damaging for the parties prospects, especially if its all just baseless accusations.
If Lowe and Habib form another right of centre party, then that could split the “right” vote further and damage Reforms chances.
I agree
I actually think a party that campaigned on honesty, integrity, truth, transparency and accountability would have zero chance of getting elected.
People can’t handle the truth, or not enough to be meaningful.
We don’t actually want politicians that tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, warts and all, we (the electorate – not we here) want people who will soothe us with pleasant sounding platitudes and give us free stuff.
Who wants to see children drown in overcrowded dinghies in the Channel, who wants to harm the planet, or see entire species go extinct, or thousands of seabirds dying horribly in an oil slick? Optics matter.
I am sure there is an element of truth in what you say. Despite that, Trump won, and so did Milei. So it’s not impossible for someone proposing real change to get elected. Harder in Europe though, with the party systems we have.
I have high hopes for Trump and the whole MAGA movement.
So far, so good on most topics – he’s still not great on vaccines and Operation Warp Speed.
However:
I know its early days, and activist judges are doing all they can to delay, proper prosecutions take time, but many people are already getting restless and doubt is setting in!
He has been better than version 1.0.
Of course he has limited scope because of the structure of the government at both federal and state level.
Agreed, they will fight him all the way, with everything they have, for some it is very much existential.
Because most people in the Conservative party are actually socialists. They believe in big government, regulation, a centrally planned economy.
They didn’t even believe in Brexit really. They called a referendum not to win an exit but to cement staying in the EU. And campaigned for staying.
As the author says, “let’s park ourselves an inch to the right of Labor and move ever further left with them as they head towards the Greens”
Except I challenge anyone to describe to me what that inch of a difference is.
Spot on. I presume the six million who voted for them at the last election, despite all the betrayal, are either also basically socialists (though they would deny that) or they are utterly and astonishingly deluded.
And it would be measured in centimetres. (Even millimetres would be more acceptable.)
We had no Brexit, we had Brexit In Name Only – BINO.
Because we had BINO, what we did do was done badly and the Left and Remainers can point and say look how wrong we were the Leave, best we get back in ASAP, and that argument is gaining momentum. This was hardly by chance!
Bravo!
It seems that every western society, except the US at the moment, is being dragged leftward despite there being some conservatives in power or about to gain power.
I expect this is because of their permanent government (civil services) being infested with playtime Marxists and Islamists. See the UK Home Office where there are 800 Muhammadans working against our people’s interests and for the Ummah.
The Islamo-communist bloc is our problem. And note that you cannot write Islamo-left or Islamo anything in the Daily Telegraph comments. I’ve tried and it blocks your post. We already have speech control by a so called right wing paper.
Remigration! Now.
The reason right wing prime ministers do nothing is because they receive their instructions from the Deep State just as left wing prime ministers do. It’s very simple.
I submit that one reason why Britain we didn’t like the Starmer government’s first few months was because it was the first time we’ve had a government policy of any kind for decades. We don’t like the policies, they are failing and being rowed back on, but at least they believed in something, unlike any government since Thatcher. Blair’s only policy was to reinforce leftism everywhere. As for the sad collection of Eton/Oxford schmoozers we’ve had since then – policy free, directionless, debt-obsessed, spineless, and ultimately useless, all of them – and they were around before the globalists?
Firstly, democracy needs to be improved to the extent that politicians are held accountable to their pre-election pledges. Look at Germany’s next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for example: pre-election he promises not to touch Germany’s constitutional limit on government spending; post-election he squirms and swivels and uses every trick in the book to plunge the country into massive debt.
If a politician reneges on his pre-election promises he should be removed from office, it is that simple.
Secondly, it can be no coincidence that all Western politicians, with the exception of Trump (who is not a career politician), execute essentially the same programmes: net zero, immigration, war, pandemics, and so on. There are obviously very, very ‘big’ personalities dictating programmes in the background. As Andrew Bridgen reported (https://expose-news.com/2025/01/20/andrew-bridgen-crimes-against-humanity/):
Bridgen initially felt that it seemed unlikely that the government was involved in a conspiracy due to the perceived incompetence of leaders like David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. However, Bridgen said, it has become apparent that these leaders are likely puppets in a larger conspiracy.
He mentioned the video that is going viral of Dominic Cummings exposing the fact that all Cabinet meetings are scripted. The people responsible for creating these scripts and their agendas are unknown.
What Cummins said regarding scripted meetings is “absolutely true” Bridgen said. He often met immense resistance and pushback when trying to discuss certain topics with ministers that they didn’t want to talk about, such as HS2 or that Gulf War syndrome was caused by vaccines.
Who are these people dictating their policies to our politicians?
Those on the Right need to understand that Blair broke the ‘Crown In Parliament’, by outsourcing decision making to QUANGOs, allowing the government to plead plausible deniability: we can’t start fraccing, because the Climate Change Committee won’t allow it, as well as Carney’s Bank of England. And so we drift, directionless. David Starkey, Matthew Goodwin, and many others can see that, without fundamental change, to return to pre-Blair, everything will remain the same.
Unless a party has a detailed manifesto, including these changes, winning a General Election will be pointless, as the House of Lords will veto EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING.
And Farage is stopping this manifesto from ever being assembled. It needs many people, with a variety of specializations, from STEM, Medicine, Business, (even Football Clubs), Supply Chain Management, Finance, Manufacturing, Mining, and a will to enforce our laws, not foreign laws. Without that the political effort will be wasted, as well as another five years.
And Nigel has let the cat out of the bag, in the first two minutes:
https://youtu.be/HnZ7jsuK7ws