An existential choice

The adage states that the winner writes history about the loser, who either accepts this history eventually or disappears from it. In the latest federal election in Australia, Labour was hailed as a historic winner, and the Liberal National Party (LNP) was the miserable loser. However, make no mistake: Labour is not a big winner, defeating the LNP in a bloodbath as a landslide victory. It was a tight race, with 80.6% of the vote counted, Labour won 34% of the primary votes, whereas the Liberals won 32%.

On the surface, Australians seem deeply divided politically. However, a pressing concern lies beneath this division: the absence of an alternative political power to the Labour Party. The political landscape is potentially tilting towards a unipolar structure, with leftist ideology gaining ground at an alarming rate.

The LNP's election campaign was in disarray, almost self-sabotaging, revealing their true colours spectacularly. It is an act of self-betrayal more so than betraying the people supporting them. For they did not stand their ground as a true conservative party, instead abandoning traditional and family values under the threat of wokeism, the Australian value of "Fair Go" through the destructive goals of DEI, the hard-won social cohesion through divisive policies, and thwarting economic progress through their commitment to Net Zero. Further, they failed to present a clear foreign and defence policy under the threat of China. They mimicked Labour's housing policies to address the crisis fuelled by unlimited and unregulated immigration, only tokenistically.

The LNP lost its uniqueness, vigour and vision in all these areas. As a result, it lost the election. This loss was not about the defeat of LNP's traditional conservatism, but about a perverted way to look and act like its opposition-the Labour Party. What is deeply problematic is not being defeated as different but as the same, against which it is expected to fight.

It further reveals a long-held but not openly spoken suspicion of many Australians: Labour and the LNP are two sides of the same coin. This election reveals a two-party system's long-entrenched and fake façade, masked in different names, faces, parties, and ideologies, aiming to give us an illusion of political opposition. In this sense, any proposal to reform the LNP only deepens this illusion, like flogging a dead or counterfeit horse.

There are pretensions to blame Trump for the LNP's failure to remain true to its values. Whether you like him or not, Trump was elected President of the US with the votes of almost 80 million Americans, who are much smarter than 27 million Australians combined in choosing their leader, qualitatively and quantitatively. The American election demonstrated the will of a massive conservative movement of the people, and it was the people's movement, not a political movement in the first place.

The fundamental problem in Australia is that people are less willing to defend their values, principles and visions. They are too complacent to believe that democracy sorts everything out miraculously for them, forgetting that it is precisely the vulnerabilities of democracy that many politicians usurp to serve the interests of their donors, handlers and influencers, but not the interests of the people who put them in power. Further, they are relinquishing silently their true power to choose their destiny, on the basis of which all political edifice is built and operate.

As a first move, this requires that they move beyond the confines of a two-party system, which deceptively lulls them into enjoying the illusions of choice in a self-insular matrix, to see a broader world with a clearer vision and a grand spirit.

It also requires that the key operations of democracy, the actual contestation between conservatives and progressives, be reinforced to present to the people a genuine alternative. People value in politics, as in personalities, originality, authenticity, and integrity. If any political party or establishment loses these, it loses its soul and voting base. What the LNP lacks is this very personality.

Internationally, the Australian political reality is not an isolated case. In two interesting cases, the Liberal Party of Canada won the latest Federal election with an inexperienced leader forming a minority government. In the UK, Labour won the 2024 election with a vast majority after the Conservatives lost their core values. This pattern indicates that left-wing parties are not only surging to power but also consolidating their power for long, and perhaps permanently, while suppressing alternative conservatives in a decisive and perhaps coordinated way. The US is the only powerful conservative government in the West now, uniquely elected by the will of most voters.

Whether this is a deliberate political alignment or a new trend, we should recognise that left-wing policies, including mutually reinforced immigration, energy, economic, and diplomatic policies, gradually gain the upper hand, making it almost hard to reverse. It will drastically change the political settings and operations of the West, with the conservatives' dwindling opportunities to restructure and rejuvenate themselves.

The fundamental issue with conservatives in the West is not their inability to develop new policies addressing emerging challenges and threats. It is primarily their reluctance to defend their traditional ideological foundations that leads the political movement in alignment with the people's will and confront their political opponents with grit and vision. Furthermore, they have a growing fear of being unique and authentic to themselves, their values, their rationality, and their commitment to traditional order, honour, and fairness.

In authentic democracies, a robust opposition to the left is necessary, particularly from the conservative side. What conservatives face in the future is not only a party system or an ideological force but a solidifying global political system that commands more people's lives through relentless propaganda, educational indoctrination, restrictive economic measures, mass social movements, control of political criticism, and leading of public narratives. The challenge for conservatives is too big to ignore anymore.

If the current trend continues, we may witness a more pronounced unipolar political alignment in the West. This alignment, devoid of alternative political forces, may shift the West towards tyranny and authoritarianism. Therefore, it is imperative to maintain a diverse political landscape, ensuring the voices of all citizens are heard and represented. Therefore, Australia must produce a party for conservatives, strengthening their position and boldly representing conservative people's values, aspirations, and policies so that they may truly and effectively exercise their political will.