The writer is in Australia.
When the so-called ‘moderate’ MPs in a Westminster conservative political party remove a sitting Prime Minister from their own party, one who has delivered a majority government but is to the right of these moderates, the long-term effects are not good. Back in 1990, and after delivering 11 years of majority governments, Maggie Thatcher was knifed by the wets or moderates in the British Tory party. It is arguable that the party has never recovered. Sure, it won elections – we had 14 years of Tory governments in the UK until Keir Starmer won for Labour last year. But those Tory governments under David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak governed full on as Labour lite (to not so lite) ones. Liz Truss was almost immediately forced out for trying to shift direction. Spending, up. Taxes, up. Total capitulation on the culture wars that relate to schools, patriotism, free speech, massively over-powerful unelected judges, attacking the democratic parts of the constitution, over-the-top huge immigration, being prepared to appoint actual conservatives to anything and being afraid to take on the worst aspects of multiculturalism. And don’t forget for two-and-a-half years a stunning willingness to travel down the path of lockdown thuggery, weaponising the police, embracing ‘nudge’ propaganda, closing schools and spending on steroids, all to ape the approach of the Communist Chinese politburo. Right now it’s an open question whether the world’s oldest political party, the British Conservative Party, will be able to survive the coming electoral inroads of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party – such is the total lack of trust that its base voters have in anything the Tory leaders promise or pledge. (It’s not easy to run the line ‘okay, we made these promises four times in the past and never delivered, in fact did the opposite, but this time guys, well, we double-promise-cross-our-hearts that this time it’ll be different’.)
My claim is that something a little bit similar has happened to the Australian Liberal Party. It has not recovered from its axing of the man from the Right-side of the partyroom who was one of the most effective Opposition leaders ever and who had delivered the party a large majority government in 2013. He was defenestrated by his own party MPs. (And yes, I know Tony Abbott was a disappointment on free speech and a bunch else beside when in office but as I said back then, “if your answer to Abbott is Malcolm Turnbull then you are the problem, not Tony”.) Since then we have seen the same pattern as in Britain. The partyroom is hopelessly divided between Black Hand Gang wets and what I would call ‘actual conservatives’. The former want to park the Liberal Party an inch to the Right of Labour and then move Leftwards as soon as Labour does. They revel in focus groups and shun value-based campaigning. Truth be told, many were quietly for ‘Yes’ as regards the Voice, at least until the writing was on the wall. Very little concern for free speech. And as with the British Tories, we had myriad supposed ‘liberal’ MPs who disgracefully embraced lockdown thuggery at least as enthusiastically as their British cousins.
All of which brings me to the current Coalition election campaign. It has been pretty woeful. But why? My guess here is that it boils down to trying to drive down the middle between moderates and conservatives in the partyroom. If Team Dutton had come out bravely and run an election on pulling us out of Net Zero, with all the massive economic advantages that would entail, I think the Coalition would have romped home – despite the vitriol the ABC and Fairfax Press would have thrown at them. If it’d come out way earlier and harder on immigration cuts (because 100,000 isn’t that big a cut and anyway, do you believe they would follow through?), taking on the big business and university lobbies that disgracefully funded and full-on supported the ‘Yes’ Voice campaign, it would have romped home. A values-based campaign would have been more like Pierre Poilievre’s in Canada. (And if Poilievre’s Tories win and Dutton loses the attempt to blame Trump will be patently laughable, remembering that Trump has relentlessly mocked Canada and that three-quarters of Canadian exports go to a US putting tariffs on them. Actually, a Poilievre win should shame the Dutton campaign team for the rest of their working lives.)
The incoherent half-matching of Labour spending pledges and refusal to fight the culture wars that so desperately need fighting all seems to stem from trying to keep both camps in the partyroom if not happy, then not incandescently angry. Call it the ‘let’s try at all costs to win Tim Wilson’s seat back from the Teals’ strategy. And boy oh boy do I hate that strategy and think it worthless.
So, Dutton’s campaign launch praising of the Morrison government approach to lockdowns won not a single vote but sure got an awful lot of Right-of-centre voters like me thinking we might preference a minor party before the thuggish Libs. Ditto for Dutton evading the ‘what’s a woman?’ question, as though there wasn’t loads of political capital in being honest and not cowardly and afraid of people and groups who’d never vote for you. Ditto for Dutton’s support of the eSafety Commissioner and for Kevin Rudd as ambassador? Why support them? And why hasn’t Labour’s failed Voice referendum self-indulgence been front and centre in the campaign? (You win if you think it’s because an awful lot of Lib MPs wanted a conscience vote and don’t want to drag that up again.) Why give Jacinta Price the Musk-like job of finding budgetary waste rather than a big-ticket cultural role? (You could be forgiven for thinking the idiots in campaign central were deliberately trying to sideline her.)
Likewise, why is it so hard to make political hay out of an Albanese Government that has seen living standards drop nearly 8% and electricity prices skyrocket? Correct answer: because you haven’t got the cojones to tell voters the truth. That Net Zero is impoverishing and totally stupid with the US now abandoning it and joining China (two new coal-fired plants a week) and India. No, Albo, Australia is not some moral beacon whose economic suicide any other countries will mimic. But commit to this idiocy, only 20 years slower, and your whole set of policies becomes incoherent. ‘You’ve agreed the world as we know it will end so tell me why we should be going slowly-slowly?’
Back on April 5th in the Spectator I argued that every Coalition campaign advisor should be fired. Three weeks on and the case for that is now blatantly clear, such is the value-free vacuum and incoherence of what we voters are being offered. Sure, maybe we can limp over the line. Let’s hope. But it beggars belief that a Government like this Albo one has the Liberal Party so afraid of its own shadow. Actually, make that afraid of the shadow of the Tony Abbott wing of the party, the one that Mr Dutton was supposed to represent.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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Great idea, and good luck. But what about the incessant propaganda from the lying BBC?
The BBC bangs the Davos – Gates drum – the only answer is total avoidance of BBC news.
So they are openly manipulating people and proud of it.
Thus tyranny is normalised by a shameless, cynical and perverse media; and the cretins still consuming it.
Some psychologists have done their ‘profession’ a great disservice these last 18 months.
I always knew psychology was bull. Now it turns out it is evil too.
Psychologists were always heavily involved in ‘eugenics’ theory and models.
Gates provides funds to all Global Media Corporations and MSM publications . There is no pluralism in the MSM – it is now just a droning propaganda monotone.
That’s right, tyranny didn’t end with the Nuremberg trials or the fall of the Berlin Wall. History, far from ending, continues apace.
But the media are not the source. That’s the Cabinet office and that’s far more serious for democracy.
“If you’ve recently read a newspaper, popular magazine, science journal or watched a major television news outlet, you have probably seen news item after news item regarding the Climate Crisis or the Climate Emergency.”
It all comes from an organisation called Covering Climate Now.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/04/the-climate-propaganda-cabal/?fbclid=IwAR1I9gLY-MdHSquFEHbRFzOuOWCSGMGfk_oHU234Z78cEFSRcasEe4GA5ws
Its a pity the people putting out the Climate Crisis or the Climate Emergency propaganda don’t look up in the sky every now and again. Below is a photo of sometimes daily occurrence above my house in France, and having a relative who’s a highly trained jet engine technician I know for sure that’s not condensation trails up there.. Absolutely disgusting..
Mmmn.. a down tick for what exactly. I must have scored a hit with my photo. Taken by a real person at a known place, and backed up with technical expertise
Luckily very few people watch Sky News.
Surely you can do this for every MSM source over the last two years? Every blatant lie, coercive article, obvious nudge, manipulative advert and all the one eyed ‘reporting’?
Come on Toby let’s report everyone. Perhaps you could organise a campaign here? Flood OFCOM, advertising standards and the press complaints commission with demands they investigate?
No, Sky (no worse, certainly than BBC etc.) has stupidly trumpeted their behaviour which, as Laura and Toby point out, is completely at odds with what the regulator is supposed to be enforcing.
They have been daft and arrogant enough to put their cocks on the block. Now we need someone to enthusiastically wield the chopper.
About time people started calling out the media. They are an absolute disgrace and know exactly what they are doing. Toby Young understands how the industry works as do the Free Speech Union which is full of media veterans. Brainwashing the masses. https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/headlines-change-way-think
Try GBNews – they are trying!
However criticism of the vaccine narrative is censored by Ofcom under the “Emergency Powers” the MPs and Johnson are so keen to maintain ‘forever.’
Like ALL those happy multiculti families which are protraed on EVERY TV commercial? And those footballers whogenuflect to tblack criminals before each game?
I give up.
Laura, Toby, brilliant work!
But good luck in getting a sensible response from Ofcom, who are up to their necks in the same putrid scam.
When, after a great delay, they tell you to “Shut Up and Save the Planet”, as they certainly will, we need to consider what further steps are available. They are likely to need crowd funding.
I guess that, unfortunately, even those increasingly aware of our Beloved Leaders’ similar wilful distortion of facts, Policy Based Evidence Making, Project Fear and their blatant recruitment of the most incompetent and venal whores in media and academia, all in the service of Zero Covid (and their nice “Christmas Cards” from Big Pharma), haven’t realised the implications of this Net Zero nonsense, which will finally destroy the West.
Well done, thank you for fighting.
Cancelling my Sky subscription 4 years ago was supremely liberating.
Do it now folks, hit them where it hurts.
Buy yourself a Freesat box, where you have access to many channels and can record hundreds of hours of programmes.
I’ve been running one from the early days of HD broadcasting – a Humax product made in 2008; still working. Loads of junk channels, but at least they’re free to browse around.
Have you heard the term ‘Propaganda‘ before? The focus should be the censorship coming with the online harms bill.
Very dangerous legislation that they are deliberately keeping out of the news. Another step towards their slow tyranny by stealth project while the sheep stay asleep.
Well it’s having the negative effect on me. I’ve had two big bonfires this month and even went for a drive just for fun in my 25mpg car and because they keep going on about it all the time I have also stopped recycling too.
Almost guarantee you’ll get 40mpg out of it if you try hard enough. Though admittedly economy runs are rather tedious…
IMO possibly the most egregious aspect of this thing in the UK has been the way in which the government has used our money to manufacture consent and terrorise us. I think governments should simply be constitutionally prohibited from having any kind of “Nudge unit”.
I’ve been telling my better half this is what goes on in British broadcasting for years and not just Net Zero either; the whole Woke agenda is foisted upon the unsuspecting public too both in programming and especially advertising. This is precisely why I no longer watch U.K. tv. All of it is blatant propaganda; sickens me our once great country has turned into this cesspit.
There is a complete lack of knowledge about how the media (propaganda) industry works. Very disappointed that Daily Sceptic hasn’t done an article explaining the importance of Headlines and their psychological impact. The UK corporate media are engaged in a 24/7 war to demonise and isolate the ‘unvaccinated’.
Over 80% of people won’t read beyond the headline and the rest who do read on will have their mindset influenced by it. Behavioural psychologists and propagandists understand all the tricks.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/headlines-change-way-think
yea but no but yea old news gov invested in media millions yea but no but yea
Well done – more of it!
SKY is owned by Globalist Corporate Comcon which bankroll disastrous Biden and the US democrats and back the whole disastrous Net Zero agenda.
As in brain-washing children? Or do they have a preferred euphemism for it?
Good stuff but I hope you checked it for typos…
I wish you the best of luck. The whole of the MSM needs investigation but you have to start somewhere.
As Ofcom guidance has been at the root of covid reporting it’s a bit like asking the police to police themselves but I fully support your efforts.
Great to see action at last on the covert activities of the Nudge Unit. There is no place for such a thing in a supposed Democracy. Not sure though why most comments(richly deserved) are directed solely at the media. They’re just the Monkeys. The Organ Grinders are the Cabinet Office. Every politician must be aware of this covert political activity. So what’s to be done about that?