Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Bremain redux a lesson for our political class

By Graham Young - posted Monday, 27 June 2016


Brittania has voted to divorce Europa, and whatever you think of the result, there are lessons for our political class.

One is the strength of the coalition between the liberal middle class and the conservative working class. If you put the Tory party back together again, yet retain the themes of the Brexit campaign under a leader who can enunciate them – independence, self-reliance, local governance, broad democracy, less regulation and free enterprise – then the Corbyn Labor Party will be obliterated at the next election.

Another is the failure of progressivism against progress. Brussels represents the sort of polite future that our own elites would like to usher us into – lots of regulations; one-size fits all, except for minorities who often earn extra entitlements; an edureaucracy; and lots of political correctness and self-censorship.

Advertisement

Britain, if not the inventor of progress, has been one of the main practitioners. It is impossible to imagine the current world without the Magna Carta or the Industrial and Free Enterprise Revolution; or a reluctant King John signing one, and Adam Smith authoring the other.

While the beneficiary of British and Scottish intellectual entrepreneurialism, the European Union also bears as heavily the ancient weight and ancestral bureaucracy of the Roman Empire and the Roman Church. It can hold an empire together, but can it make it live?

The UK has chosen life, even though that may be less secure than the embrace of the continent.

Suddenly Bill Shorten, and to a lesser extent, Malcolm Turnbull, are on the wrong side of the tide. For how long, no one knows, but it should not only affect the outcome of the next election, but the way the parties conduct it.

Turnbull was elected on the presupposition that you win elections from the middle. While this is standard dogma in the departments of politics and peace and conflict studies, it is wrong. And the UK repeats the lesson it is wrong yet again.

You can pick up votes across the spectrum, and right and left are only rough descriptors for what is a much more messy reality.

Advertisement

Shorten is scrambling to protect his progressive left flank against the Greens, forgetting the solid, skeptical, working class voters somewhere on his right.

He could win from the centre, because he has the left flank secured, and a large slab of the comfortable middle class as well.

Turnbull can’t win from the centre because the segment of the middle-class loosely and inaccurately characterised as “doctor’s wives”, has deserted him because he has not changed Liberal Party policy on issues like climate change or refugees.

But he can do what Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Tony Abbott were able to do and pull together a coalition of the liberal and conservative middle class with the conservative working class.

This is exactly the same coalition that the Bexiteers put together in Britain. It is the coalition that sustained Margaret Thatcher (and also Ronald Reagan).

It is a powerful coalition because it tends to value experience over theories, which is really to say reality over fantasy. It has a sense of the nation as a distinct entity, and values the common good in ways that can lead to postponing gratification and putting a high premium on the future, allowing it to put up with a bit of incovenience in the present to advance the prospects for the whole.

It is skeptical of those who presume to know best, and wants to control its own destiny. While it shares some narratives, its alliance is more about attitude than common belief.

So it can be persuaded to back things like budget repair. And whatever individuals may think about particular issues they are happy to see them debated openly, giving offence at times. It likes to punish the politically correct.

The coalition can use this decision as a pivot point for the last week of the campaign, enunciate clearly what the Brexiteers stand for and point out that the majority of Australians stand for that as well.

It would neatly sum up the themes that they have been struggling to articulate about the need for a well-managed economy, where everyone pulls their weight without expecting a handout, and where issues such as gay marriage are settled in the most democratic of ways. Where the nation is maintained as a self-governing entity with secure borders and people are trusted to make decisions for themselves.

The theme of the need for economic certainty in the wake of this decision is not sufficient. Indeed, when the markets go back to work on Monday after having thought about it, there is likely to be a bounce in the pound and the stockmarket, banishing the uncertainty argument to the corner.

The real earthquake in the Brexit result isn’t financial, it is democratic and cultural, as a population has reasserted its right to be heard and to be treated as part of a demos. Long live democracy.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

28 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Graham Young

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Graham Young
Article Tools
Comment 28 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy