What the Tories can learn from the surprising recovery being staged by the Australian Liberals
The Liberals should have descended into a spiral of in-fighting after suffering a crushing loss in 2022. Why didn't they?
This piece was first published on UnHerd and has been updated to incorporate a fresh political debate over Australia Day.
It was a startling comment for an ambitious opposition frontbencher to make, and one that should have been unimaginable given that less than 18 months ago Australia’s centre-right Liberal Party was in electoral ruin, its moderate wing reduced to dust. Haemorrhaging 18 seats, the Party was all but wiped out in inner-city areas.
‘This next election will be competitive,’ Party senator James Paterson stated, as 2023 drew to an end. ‘We certainly haven’t got it in the bag [...] but we know what we need to do to get there.’
In May 2022, the Liberals’ crown jewel electorates were gobbled up by a new wave of mostly female teal candidates, who championed action on climate change and posed as the antidote to then Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s pugnacious style. One Australian Liberal described it to me as ‘an extinction-level event’.
So why didn’t the Liberals fall into a spiral of self-destruction like the one currently gripping their British equivalent, the Tory Party? The reasons are twofold and serve as vital lessons for the philosophically driftless Conservatives, who seem intent on creating ever more subfactions as their government draws its dying breaths.
The leadership of Peter Dutton, who took over following the 2022 election defeat, has been critical to the Australian Liberals’ recovery. Hailing from the Right of the party, his latter years in Cabinet were largely spent openly baiting ‘Lefties’ on national security and migration, so politicians from the country’s Labor Party rubbed their hands at the prospect of the Liberals’ lurch to the Right. Yet this didn’t happen.
While some members of Australia’s centre-right party have shown interest in following US Republicans and British Tories by pursuing issues such as the trans debate, Dutton has tried to steer clear of contentious culture-war debates. ‘He wants us to be mainstream and avoid distractions,’ one frontbencher, who is close to the leader, told me.
Another senior Liberal told me that Dutton has put a premium on internal unity and has focused on non-partisan, ‘centrist’ issues, citing the cost of living, energy costs and government competence. These same issues should be the Tories’ bread-and-butter should they find themselves opposing Prime Minister Keir Starmer by the end of the year.
This is not to say that Dutton will not capitalise on culture wars when he sees an opportunity. Take a story I recently broke about the Australian High Commissioner Stephen Smith cancelling an Australia Day gala event in London, citing ‘sensitivities’ around marking January 26, a day many Indigenous supporters and campaigners call Invasion Day.
Dutton jumped onto the story immediately and pursued it vigorously.
As Australia Day nears, so too does the perennial debate over moving the date - something that is not even on the table but is hotly debated each summer. When supermarket Woolworths removed Australia Day merchandise from sale, Dutton called for a boycott.
Bashing big business and so-called ‘woke corporate culture’ is an easy win in Australia and part of the Liberals’ attempt to rebadge themselves as the party of small businesses as opposed to the big end of town.
So Dutton will believe his comments are in sync with the mainstream and part of his overall strategy to reach working voters, who are frustrated when they see corporations like Qantas focus on supporting political campaigns instead of delivering better services. Yet Dutton didn’t need to overreach, as he did in calling for a boycott, to make those points and to keep his message in the centre.
Yet Right-wing Tories need not fear that electoral viability requires a lurch to the Left, either. This line of thinking was en vogue immediately after the Coalition’s defeat, but Dutton resisted calls from what remained of the moderate wing to tack towards Labor’s policies.
This paid off in two ways. On climate, the Liberal leader was faced with an early test when Labor legislated the country’s 2050 net zero target. A vote against this motion would have risked ignoring the will of an electorate broadly in favour of stronger climate mitigation; a vote in support would have blown up the remains of the party’s backing in Queensland, one of Australia’s most conservative-voting states. Dutton read the party room. The legislation passed, as it was always going to do, without Coalition support.
Then there was his decision to oppose the Indigenous Voice campaign. Though public polling was in favour of saying Yes to the motion, Coalition members were strongly against constitutionally enshrining a policy body for Indigenous Australians. In the end, Dutton’s view was overwhelmingly backed by 61% of the population when it was put to a referendum, the result shattering Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s confidence.
First elected to the House of Representatives in 2001, Dutton not only has a working memory of working in a successful and stable Coalition government but, critically, an understanding of how the ‘broad church’ of the party’s various factional wings can and should operate in government. In November polling company Newspoll had the Coalition, comprising the Liberals and the National Party of Australia, neck and neck for the first time since the election.
The Liberals are unlikely to reach government, yet it is astonishing that they are within striking distance in the polls, given the scale of the Coalition's loss in 2022. Wiser heads in Britain’s Tory Party should take note: recovery from a near-existential loss only becomes existential in how one responds to it. Choosing unity over division reveals that the pathway back to power does not have to cost an entire generation of talent and experience.
As a dual citizen who also votes in both Australian and UK elections, I agree. But from Australia it seems the Tory Party has already turned hard right as manifested by the "five families" factions. The "One Nation" moderates maybe the largest group but they are quiet. Boris expelled competent Ministers like David Gauke who were replaced in the media by right wing populists and often Christian evangelicals like Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger. Many trace this change back to Brexit. But to me Brexit is just another manifestation that many Tory politicians and ordinary Brits have not accepted the UK's contemporary economic and political global position following both the lost of empire and the end of its coal fired domestic manufacturing (as a boomer I was still taught at school that Britain was "the workshop of the world"). Britain's budget position means Starmer will be extremely constrained in what he can achieve. I get frustrated by his flip flopping reticence but it seems to be an extreme, expectation management strategy. In Australia, for all its issues and failures, there seems here to be a general acceptance of where we sit - a prosperous middle power who is dependent on the US for our defence and so our global presence outside the region is limited to sending a token boat or plane to be seen to be publicly supporting American strategies. I do not think AUKUS will change that significantly. The Brexiteers talk about "Global Britain" and the Asia Pacific replacing many EU partnerships. But when the UK sent an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea it had to borrow half the planes from the US. How many Brits acknowledge in terms of GDP (PPP) per capita the UK is ranked 27th in the world behind the US as well as many other places like Singapore and even Australia (20). In terms of air power the UK is well below not only the super powers of the US and China but also India, Japan and often South Korea. Historically the Spanish and Dutch took years to adjust to losing the wealth and power of their empires. Starmer needs to recognise the economic consequences but if he tries it will make him very unpopular and the Conservative Right will accuse him of being unpatriotic and talking down Britain. But maybe he should take a leaf from former Labour figures like Tony Benn and even Harold Wilson who at least recognised the problem and tried boldly to advocate for the UK to become a technological super power. Strange that Benn talking about the "white hot heat of technology" was half a century ago - but he did get the Supersonic Concorde off the ground.