Elections in Canada, England, and Australia
by Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone Institute
In a rare confluence, Canada, Britain, and Australia held elections within a week of one another, although in Britain’s case, these were local elections in England. Yet England’s local elections may turn out to be the most consequential of the three for centre-right politics across the Western world. Last year I noted, amidst a gathering crisis of democracy, the rise of the New Right on both sides of the North Atlantic. Against that wider backdrop, at the start of the year, centre-right parties were expected to do well in all three countries.
In an interesting week, Canada’s Conservative Party saw a once 20-point advantage in the polls slide behind the governing Liberal Party on 28 April, UK Reform caused a political earthquake in England as it exceeded expectations and forecasts on 1 May, and Australia’s Liberal-National coalition suffered the shock of a significant swing against it to hand Labor a landslide re-election victory on 3 May. The polls proved reasonably accurate in capturing the electoral shifts in Canada and England but failed spectacularly in Australia. For reasons that should be self-evident, in this article I focus mostly on Australia but in the context of elections in the other two countries around the same time, in particular to gauge the implications for the future of centre-right politics.
Canada
In Canada, the Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre were blindsided by the defenestration of the deeply reviled Justin Trudeau and his replacement by the globalist banker Mark Carney and secondly by President Donald Trump’s repeated interventions with the call for Canada to become the 51st US state. Were this to happen, the Republicans could say goodbye to control of the House and Senate possibly forever, since Canada is even further to the left in its centre of political gravity than California and New York. Trump was almost certainly trolling Canadians. But his interventions undermined and sank Poilievre.
Lest we forget, however, Poilievre performed exceptionally well in the context of Canadian political history. The Liberals increased their vote share from 32.6 to 43.7 percent but the Conservative vote share also increased from 33.8 to 41.3 percent, the highest in four decades. This was reflected in the gain in parliamentary seats for both parties: the Liberals from 154 to 168 and the Conservatives from 128 to 144. Voter turnout increased from 63 to 69 percent, mostly owing to the Trump effect. This worked to Carney’s advantage.
Even so, Poilievre lost principally not because voters suddenly developed a dislike for him or his policies, but because the left vote coalesced around Carney while much of the Conservative vote is wasted because it is concentrated in too many safe seats and not spread evenly enough to tip the scales in the more competitive seats. The New Democratic Party (NDP) vote collapsed from 17.8 to 6.3 percent, the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) share fell by 1.4 percent, the Greens by 1.1 percent, and the People’s Party by 4.2 percent. The NDP’s parliamentary strength plummeted from 24 to just 7 seats, not enough to grant them party status in the new house, while the BQ lost 12 and is down to 23 seats.
On 9 December 2024, at a time when the NDP was level pegging with the unpopular Trudeau-led Liberal Party and the BQ was also polling well in Quebec, both minor parties voted against the no-confidence motion tabled by Poilievre. Trudeau survived, the Liberal Party changed leaders, and the rest is history. Many suspect that the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was strongly motivated by the desire to ensure a full gold-plated parliamentary pension for which he would become eligible in late February 2025. On 28 April, karma came back with a vengeance to bite both the minor parties. Having refused to take the political tide at full flood in December that would have brought the two minor parties political riches, in April the political voyage of their lives was becalmed in shallows and miseries. Perhaps neither leader has read his Shakespeare.
That said, I do believe that without Trump’s incendiary comments that outraged the vast majority of Canadians, Poilievre would have won. Carney has been an ardent insider advocate of every major policy that has led Canada to the brink. Thanks to Trump’s narcissism and needless antagonism of the vast majority of Canadians, he drove them back into the arms of the Liberals. And so he lost the election for someone who would have been a natural and eloquent ally on the world stage for most of his agenda.
Still, even though Poilievre lost his own seat he is likely to survive to fight another election where Carney’s globalist, Davos-aligned, and Tony Blair-blessed background will provide a rich menu of attack lines.
England
The caution against exaggerating the Trump factor is reinforced by the spectacular triumph of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in England. Of the three leaders, Farage has had the longest personal relationship that may be as close to friendship as Trump gets. Farage never disowned the friendship yet neither did he kiss Trump’s ass, to use one of the president’s favourite expressions that he has deployed in the past with respect to some of the most senior members of his administration.
Elon Musk attacked Farage and suggested he should step aside as party leader in favour of Rupert Lowe, who had developed something of a cult following in his own right as an attack dog in Parliament. Farage ousted one of just five Reform MPs from the party and also referred Lowe to the police in March for alleged threats against party chairman Zia Yusuf. This caused short-term embarrassment but the fact that Farage had moved quickly to take forceful action against a seemingly errant MP in the end probably worked to boost his image as a decisive leader.
More importantly, Farage and the party kept up their relentless attacks on the Labour-Conservative uniparty and positioned themselves as the only true centre-right conservative alternative. Their charge of ‘Vote Conservative, get Labour’ resonated in the May local elections and has acquired greater cogency after the results. Their sharp ‘product differentiation’ from the Tories on immigration, net zero, DEI, and gender wars, constantly reminding voters of the Tories’ failure in 14 years to address any of these hot-button issues, struck a deep and wide chord across swathes of the electorate in both urban and rural settings.
The white hot rage still bubbling against the great betrayal of values and election manifestos by the Tories, and the haemorrhaging of support from the Labour government after Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer’s loveless landslide a year ago, were harnessed to assiduous and meticulous buildup of the party structure, greater attention to candidate selection than in last year’s general election, and an impressive membership drive that saw them overtake the Conservatives before 2024 had ended. The channelling of the electric energy of enthusiastic campaigners, leafleters, activists, and supporters ensured a high voter turnout.
The result? From a standing start, the party won 31 percent of the votes cast to gain control of ten of the 23 councils that went to the polls, won 677 council seats and two mayoral races, and has regained a fifth MP in a by-election held on the same date in one of Labour’s safest seats, even if with the slimmest of margins of six votes. The Conservatives lost 674 council seats to be reduced to just 319 councillors and lost control of all 16 council authorities that they were defending. Labour lost 187 councillors to end up with only 98 seats. The Liberal Democrats gained 163 seats and control of three councils.
Farage is right to hail the results as unprecedented and signifying the end of two-party politics. Allison Pearson reports on the case of a 99-year-old grandmother, who served as a Wren working on Enigma code-breaking in the Second World War, who went down to the polling station by herself to vote for Reform, determined to save Britain while there is still time.
The party has been transformed from an electoral pressure point on Labour and Conservatives into a distinct and long-term electoral force that will cannibalise Tory voters to pose the most likely serious threat to Starmer come the next general election. Meanwhile there’s the postponed local elections to come next year. Whenever the general election is held, Reform will have a vastly expanded cadre of ground troops along with a record to show they mean business different from the insipid governance of the uniparties.
Farage and his deputy Richard Tice have already warned of an aggressive push to roll back DEI and net zero initiatives in councils under Reform control. On 5 May, party chairman Yusuf followed by saying that the ten councils under Reform will fly only the Union Jack and St George’s Cross flags; that is, no more woke flags like the rainbow Pride.
Farage could be the de facto leader of the opposition in the present and the PM in the next parliament. A BBC projection of the local results to the national level shows Reform first with 30 percent of the votes, followed by Labour on 20, LibDems 17 and Conservatives a distant fourth on 15 percent. This is replicated in a YouGov UK poll published on 6 May which shows Reform on 29, Labour 22, Conservatives 17, and LibDems 16 percent. With that spread, Britain’s first-past-the-post system would deliver a landslide to Reform. That’s how much of a revolution it was. Farage could be the de facto leader of the opposition in the present and the PM in the next parliament.
Australia
The explanation for the success of Reform in the UK holds a mirror to explain the failure of the Liberal-National parties’ Coalition in Australia. The inevitable post-mortems on failures of strategy and tactics will distribute the blame between the leader, party hierarchy, and communications team. The Liberal Party chose the most anodyne campaign theme imaginable – ‘Get Australia Back on Track’ (seriously!). The failure to brand the Coalition as a serious and credible alternative set of values more in tune with core Australian values is a failure principally of the leader. Dutton was too focus group-driven, reacted to Labor initiatives with a series of ‘me too’-isms, and lacked cut-through messaging ability.
International media – the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Indian Express, the UK Telegraph – emphasised the Trump factor as a major explanation for Dutton’s defeat, both directly in that Dutton was framed as an Australian Trump and indirectly because of the global volatility and chaos he had unleashed. I disagree. This is lazy commentary that feeds into the US and global anti-Trump narrative.
Peter Dutton refused to heed the exhortations freely offered by public intellectuals from among his core base to join the global shifts away from net zero, mass immigration, state censorship, DEI, and gender-fluid identity. Both he and his team seemed too ashamed to speak up for any identifiable conservative values, without which it becomes impossible to craft a narrative, strategy, and campaign tactics. When the party brass are too embarrassed to talk core conservative values, conservative voters are not motivated to vote for their side.
Labor succeeded in defining Dutton in the public consciousness as a dislikable meanie who, if put in power, would indulge his inner nasty persona. The Coalition couldn’t penetrate the teflon shield that protected PM Anthony Albanese’s aura of regular guy affability. They failed to frame a narrative about Albanese zooming in on his lies, deceptions, duplicity, evasions, and incompetence; on the falling standard of living by OECD benchmarks; on the looming theft of people’s savings through an impost on unrealised capital gains from superannuation funds that through bracket creep will rapidly trap a substantial number of Australians; on the betrayal of Israel and the timorous handling of the growing China threat.
The exceptionally target-rich record of the government in power was matched only by the most inept campaign I have witnessed. Labor didn’t deserve to win but boy did the Coalition deserve to lose. If they fail to confront and address their multiple value deficits, they will deserve to be consigned to the political wilderness for a long time to come.
Dutton’s alternative policy platform simply wasn’t compelling enough. ‘Since its election in 2022, the Albanese government has pursued an Australian version of Bidenomics with a high tax-and-spend program of action, says David Pearl, a former Treasury assistant secretary. Dutton at the start of the campaign in effect endorsed Labor’s idea that this approach was the solution to the problem, thus presenting a policy platform essentially indistinguishable from Albanese’s. Why then would voters throw out the Albanese government after just one three-year term in favour of Labor-lite Liberals, an ersatz version of the real deal?
The Folly and the Fantasy of Net Zero
Consider net zero, based on the cult-like faith of governments changing the weather, elevating that fantasy over the prosperity of families, and sacralising the fantasy to such an extent as to extend state power over individuals and businesses seemingly without limit. Last year Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Pact on climate change with a set of timetabled targets on emission reductions for various countries. That meant the absence of all the big emissions-spewing hitters: China, the US, Russia, India. Last month former British PM Tony Blair called for a major rethink of net zero policies, arguing that the effort to limit energy consumption and restrict fossil fuel production is ‘doomed to fail.’ Voters, he said, are ‘being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know the impact on global emissions is minimal.’
On 1 May, the US Congress voted to repeal the waiver that had allowed California to impose its EV mandate on several other states. The most striking part of the 246-164 vote to end California’s regulatory imperialism was the bipartisanship, with 35 Democrats joining the Republicans. This is a telling indicator of the extent to which the politics of EVs specifically and climate change in general have changed when even the Democrats are starting to abandon their progressive nostrums. No one seems to have told the major Australian parties.
Soaring energy costs coupled with very visible demonstrations of the harsh reality that ‘renewables’ in fact are the ‘unreliables’ of energy supply, creating intermittency and power outages, have brought home to consumers in stark terms the financial costs of the trajectory away from the fossil fuel mainstay for power generation and distribution to residential consumers and commercial customers. Yet, instead of taking advantage of the changing global narrative, Dutton doubled down on net zero commitment, but postponed the date for achieving Australia’s target by a few years. Similarly with regard to mass immigration, he promised only to cut Labor’s Big Australia target by 25 percent. In other words his vision was limited to managing Australia’s decline better and more gradually than the Albanese government.
These are not policy settings calculated to enthuse party activists nor excite and inspire voters. Someone should have reminded Dutton of the famous quote from Margaret Thatcher: ‘Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.’
The Importance of Conviction Leaders
The single most important political role of a party leader campaigning to win office against a ruling party in government is to provide leadership: the elusive ability to make others connect emotionally and intellectually to a larger cause that transcends their immediate self-interest. Leadership consists of articulating a bold and noble vision for a community and establishing standards of achievement and conduct, explaining why they matter, and inspiring or coaxing others to adopt the agreed goals and benchmarks as their personal goals.
Dutton singularly failed this test of leadership and this is the most potent explanation for his defeat despite multiple polls until the eve of the election confirming that the majority of Australians believed Albanese deserved to lose. But a majority also said Dutton hadn’t done enough to win back government. The net result is a loveless landslide victory for Labor that echoes what happened in the UK last year, with a historically low voter share but a commanding hold on parliamentary seats.
On present count Labor has 92 and the Liberal-National coalition 42 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, with results for 5 seats yet to be declared. However, as in the UK, in Australia too Labor’s support is soft. On a two-party preferred basis, Labor (six million votes) beat the Coalition (five million votes) by 54.7 to 45.3 percent. But on first preferences, Labor only won 34.8 percent of the votes cast. By way of contrast, Kevin Rudd won 83 seats in 2007 with 43.4 percent of votes cast.
Like Starmer in the UK, Albanese could mistake the loveless landslide of seats won as an electoral mandate for implementing an ideological agenda or be pressured towards that agenda by the left faction of the party and the trade unions. Like the UK, this could lead to a rapid escalation of popular anger against Labor. Unlike the UK, however, there is no Australian equivalent of the Reform Party nor of Nigel Farage to replace the Liberal Party as the centre-right alternative in the political marketplace.
Based on their record while in government and the liberal scattering of spending promises during the campaign, the Liberal Party is no longer the alternative party that values enterprise, reward for risk-taking and effort, and personal responsibility. Trade unions are already signalling they will use their power and influence over Labor to stifle free enterprise. It would seem that my aspirational generation’s influence over the social, political, and economic fabric and the direction of Australia has ended. Young people who have been converted into a sense of entitlement to cradle-to-grave government assistance to sustain their modern tech-heavy consumption and work-shy lifestyle will eventually be caught in the trap of bracket creep and be saddled with alarmingly rising levels of public debt. You reap what you sow.
At the same time, the catastrophic scale of defeat may prove a blessing in disguise. A narrow defeat might have reinforced the narrative of not having shifted left enough to win back the inner city elites. Instead the existential crisis (the Liberal Party’s vote share shrunk to 20.8 percent and the Coalition’s altogether was 32.1 percent) opens up the opportunity for renewal of the sensible right, especially as the loveless landslide could easily tip the second-term Albanese government into polling doldrums as has happened in the UK.
The columnist Simon Benson wrote in the Australian on the Monday after Saturday’s shock election results:
Australia has changed. The Coalition’s existential problem is that, as a political party, it has failed to change with it…It is the Coalition that is now out of touch with Middle Australia, while perhaps not entirely out of step with its values, but certainly its expectations.
Contrast this with former Liberal foreign minister Alexander Downer writing in the same paper on the same day:
The greatness of Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Thatcher and even our own Robert Menzies lay not in the quantity of handouts they offered the public with borrowed money but the passion with which they argued the case for their nation’s survival and prosperity. They gave purpose to the nation and the endeavours of its people.
Politics is more than a debate over management. It’s about the contest of ideas over the organising principles around which to structure the political, economic, and social orders. In recent years the political left has been the more successful in winning the values argument across the West. In those countries where populist leaders have confronted the left’s value settings head-on, they have made deep inroads into the political institutions.
Those that run away from the philosophical challenge live to rue another big election loss. Unless the Liberal Party of Australia replaces careerist politician leaders focussed on the spoils of power with conviction politicians committed to a core organising principle and prepared to exercise power to reverse the destructive expansion of welfare and bureaucracy, it will shuffle off-stage into the political sunset for good.
Rosebuds of Consolation
The outcome of Australia’s election is thus less an affirmation of Albanese and his agenda than a repudiation of the Coalition because it failed to articulate a credible, let alone a compelling, agenda of its own. For a congenital optimist, the May rosebuds of consolation are to be found in the electoral retreat of the Greens. They have exactly zero seats in the House at the time of writing, and at best could end up with just one of four from the previous House. I’ll take these precious few crumbs of comfort.
A much shorter version of this is published in The Spectator Australia magazine on 10 May
Elections in Canada, England, and Australia
by Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society
The post Elections in Canada, England, and Australia was first published by The Brownstone Institute, and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please support their efforts.
