Around the Anglosphere, conservatives are fighting back against the capture of the established conservative political parties by the soft left or ‘wets’ or RINOs or Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull ‘Black Hand’ types, call them what you will. That’s true in the US, in Canada, in Britain, and even in New Zealand.  But in Australia?  Hmm.  At best, we’re in fifth place out of five and notching up more losses than wins at the moment.

In the US and Canada, conservatives haven’t just fought back.  They’ve won.   One of President Trump’s greatest achievements may prove to be how he drove the bulk of the Chamber of Commerce establishment Republicans (yep to mass immigration, yep to wages as low as possible, yep to sending manufacturing off-shore, yep to capitulating on culture war issues including giving up on free speech, yep to not fighting back against net zero idiocies) out of the party.  These ‘Republicans in Name Only’ (‘RINOs’) opposed him at every turn.  But Trump won the nomination.  He won the election on an aggressive policy platform no RINO would countenance.  He then nominated actual conservatives to his cabinet – people hated and attacked by the lefty media and administrative state, who had stood firm against these attacks.  All that plus the opportunity conservative party members had to ‘primary’ (or challenge for preselection) any ‘wet’, RINO Republican member of Congress.  It’s plain that Mr. Trump has re-made the Republican party.  That means there’s a high chance conservatives will get policies from their elected representative that are – you know – conservative.

As for Canada, the political centre of gravity is much more to the left than in the US and noticeably further to the political left than even here in Australia. Yet the Conservative party leader in Canada, Pierre Poilievre, is not only 23 points up in the polls. He’s up because he’s taking real conservative positions. In a recent podcast, Poilievre attacked Canadian oil and gas company CEOs for their wokeness and unwillingness to stand up against net zero idiocies.  He called them cowards. He’s also made it clear he’s going to repeal the Trudeau carbon tax, significantly wind back immigration numbers, fight on a host of culture war fronts, reduce taxes, and (most enjoyably for me) slash the budget of the national broadcaster.  Given that Canada’s Tory party was stuffed with as many ‘wets’ or ‘Black Hand’ types as you’d find here in Australia’s Liberal party, how does Poilievre do it?  It’s simple.  In Canada the leader (nationally and at the provincial level) is chosen by the party members – which explains why Canada’s Tories have 750,000 members and the Libs in Australia barely make 20,000.  Join the party in Canada.  Wait a year.  And you get the same right to vote for the leader as cabinet ministers. Were it up to the Tory MPs in Canada, Poilievre would never, ever have become the leader.  But the party members pick him and only they can remove him.  Under that system, does anyone believe that Malcolm Turnbull could have defenestrated Tony Abbott?  Or that ‘free speech never created a single job’ Scott Morrison would ever have sold his core voters down the river and signed up to net zero?  Not a chance.  In Canada, meanwhile, the wets fall into line.

What about in Britain?  Well, there it’s taken a whole new party, Nigel Farage’s Reform party, to give conservative voters hope.  Recent polls show Reform ahead of the Tories and basically tied with Labour.  The problem for Britain’s Conservative party is that actual conservative MPs were almost wiped out in the last election.  Conservatives stayed home or voted for Reform.  So today, about 80 per cent of Tory MPs are One Nation, ‘wet’, lefty conservatives.  I’d bet that over half the Tory party room, right now, were Remainers at the time of the Brexit referendum.  This, along with the deft political touch of Nigel Farage, has driven the phoenix-like rise of Reform.  It now has more members than the Tory party, perhaps a lot more (the Tories, like Australia’s Libs, are too embarrassed to release the official number of party members).  Reform has all the momentum.  It is taking the policy positions that need to be taken – leave the European Convention, repeal the Human Rights Act, drastically cut immigration, recant net zero idiocies, and fight on every culture war front going.  In just a few months this has seen Reform steal big swathes of Labour voters and bigger ones still from the Tories.  So, it’s bad in Britain, for sure, but there are reasons for hope and optimism.  Across the Tasman, two little parties in New Zealand, ACT and NZ First, are forcing a clearly reluctant National party to grow a small spine too.

And what of Australia?  Well, you might have thought after the stunning ‘No’ win in the Voice referendum, Peter Dutton would have moved on to make the obvious conservative calls, most importantly to significantly decrease legal immigration.  You might have thought Dutton would be saying, ‘If Trump and the US pull out of Paris and laugh at net zero, we aren’t going to impoverish Australia in some Don Quixote quest.’ You might have thought Dutton would see how woeful our eSafety Commissioner is (a Lib appointee, naturally) and fight just a bit for free speech.  You might have thought Dutton would impose himself on the party room and ensure preselections went to conservatives, not Julie Bishop/‘Black Hand’ types. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Take last week’s preselection battle for Paul Fletcher’s seat of Bradfield on Sydney’s North Shore.  Warren Mundine, who co-led the Voice’s ‘No’ campaign (and who was strongly endorsed by Tony Abbott, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Peter Dutton, and other conservatives), went up against Gisele Kapterian, a Tealish, ‘wet’, former Julie Bishop staffer endorsed by that lockdown thug Gladys Berejiklian.  Do you remember Premier Gladys?  She supported a ‘Yes’ vote for the Voice.  Well, Mundine lost.  That would not happen in Canada or the US.  Maybe there just aren’t many conservatives willing to be in this party any more.

I know. I know. This is a constituency where Teal views will be very influential.  And some might think Mundine dodged a bullet. But come on! This speaks volumes about Australia’s ‘Liberal party’.  When do conservatives start to win anything in Australia?  Maybe win a few preselections?  Here’s the thing.  You win politically (see the rest of the Anglosphere) by selling differentiation and a willingness to fight.  Not by adopting a softly-softly, same-same, lefty mush approach.  Long term, the Poilievre approach is the only one that works.

Sorry readers. Yes, Dutton will be a massive improvement on Albo.  (Who wouldn’t be?) But it’s still the case that Australia’s the outlier and that we’re in fifth place in terms of reasons for optimism.