JudgeMental said:

Carrick Ryan

Angus Taylor’s ascension to the Liberal Party leadership will reveal a lot about the recent surge in popularity of One Nation, particularly whether this surge represents a structural shift or simply another cyclical protest spike remains unclear

Essentially, we will soon better understand if a large part of the electorate has lurched to the right, or whether Australia’s conservative party is simply experiencing a factional civil war.

Because it’s worth asking the question, how much further to the right is One Nation today than the Coalition was under Peter Dutton? The fact that the former leader of the Nationals was able to become the star recruit of One Nation without changing any major policy stances should be a pretty big clue.

So what has caused this sudden existential crisis for a political party which has always had “moderate” and “right wing” factions, yet was able to win a federal election as recently as 2019?

A large part is because social media has stretched the political spectrum so much that the ideological bell curve is flattening out. Even the Labor Party is confronting dissent from within for not being progressive enough on key issues like climate change and Israel.

Social media has a tendency to reinforce our beliefs, essentially radicalising ourselves on multiple issues. This means our cultural dividing lines are no longer on just a few major policy issues, they’re drawn across multiple front lines, especially within controversial culture war topics.

The internet has made us more puritanical in our beliefs, and less compromising, and substantially more likely to be angry at those who disagree with us. As the numbers of those willing to agree to disagree shrinks, the silos of those willing to work together gets smaller, and greater in number.

I’m not suggesting that the grievances that are fuelling One Nation’s surge in support aren’t sincere, but I don’t think those grievances are particularly new. I simply think that a large number of more conservative voters now find it impossible to vote for the Coalition while it’s being led by a centre-right woman, while previous generations saw a more binary choice along a handful of ideological lines, usually taxation, industrial relations, and government spending.

Taylor is against emissions targets, is a social conservative, and has argued for cuts to migration, particularly among those that don’t share “Australian values”.

One Nation effectively share these policy platforms, albeit with a more MAGA style populist tint (e.g. a “Muslim ban” and withdrawing from several international conventions). Simply handing the reins of the Coalition back to a conservative of similar shape and sound as Dutton, Morrison, or even Howard, might be sufficient to lure back a large number of the disaffected voters currently signalling their intent to switch camps.

Taylor may not be ideologically outspoken as Hanson, but symbolically he signals a return to a more traditional conservative identity that has defined the Liberal Party since the 1990s.

The problem Taylor will face is that appeasing this cohort necessitates abandoning another, with women in particular likely to look upon the treatment of Sussan Ley with depressing familiarity, while metropolitan voters will struggle to support a political party with such indifference to established science.

Both Labor and the Liberal Party are experiencing the consequences of increasingly passionate factionalism. Yet while Albanese has leant into the centre to ensure a broad electoral popularity, Taylor will likely prioritise leaning further to the right in an attempt to prove his conservative credentials.

Unlike the USA or UK, however, compulsory voting in Australia means that elections are won at the centre, and while the bell curve is flattening, it’s difficult to see how anyone forms government without broad support from moderate and less engaged voters.

The big variable in this to consider is how significantly Australia’s richest person, with the support of the White House, and Elon Musk, can move the electoral centre by the next election. Polling over the coming weeks will provide an insight into whether are political centre has shifted, or whether the Coalition was simply stretched too far to contain itself any longer.

clinging to the old non rules based liberal if you’re the right demographic group international order there we see

a rise in fascist aligned politics everywhere as fascists in some places gain strength and interfere help with politics in other places, and we’re still telling the naïve readers it’s just a factional disagreement

sure