For better or worse, other nations enjoy the option of ousting or installing conservative leaders. No such luck in Australia, however, where the result of our sooner-or-later election is pre-ordained. Regardless of the winner’s party, we’ll have a leftist in The Lodge.
Midway through last year the political situation in the developed English-speaking world looked pretty good to those of us right-leaning voters who put a big value on small government, free-speech, Hobbesian strong national defence and national sovereignty. There were conservative governments in Canada, New Zealand, the UK and here in Australia. Canada had Stephen Harper in office, who had been Prime Minister a decade, despite being hated by the public broadcaster, the bien pensants in the universities and all the usual inner-city types gathered at their favourite fair-trade coffee shops.
New Zealand had a long-serving John Key in office. True, when it comes to national defence the Kiwis can and do free-ride on the coat-tails of Australia and the US, spending next to nothing while making meaningless (indeed harmful) gestures about no nuclear US navy ships being allowed to visit. Prime Minister Key isn’t exactly my cup of tea when it comes to his enthusiasm for criminalising parents who spank their children, or his views on the highly proportional German-style voting system there, or indeed on the need to change the Kiwi flag. (Mr. Key favours all three of those, I dislike them all.) Yet by New Zealand standards he is far more right-leaning than the alternative.
In the United Kingdom in the middle of last year you had a Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron who looked decidedly vulnerable. An election loomed and his prospects looked less than sterling. (We all now know that Mr. Cameron went on to lead the Tories to a surprising majority government win.) Mr. Cameron had by midyear taken to trying to reposition himself to the right, as he had discovered he actually needed the votes of regular party members who were bleeding off to the United Kingdom Independence Party. Heck, Mr. Cameron had even promised a referendum on staying in the Europe Union should he win the next election – admittedly not the most likely possibility at the time the promise was made.
Here in Australia, Mr. Abbott was the prime minister. On national sovereignty and foreign affairs he was excellent. On government spending he at least made the right noises, the incompetence of making the case for it and then implementing it notwithstanding. You knew he was a man of the right. You knew he was despised by the ABC, which is almost always a sign of being on the correct side of any argument (not unlike finding yourself on the opposite side of an issue to the Greens). He was a good way down in the polls but the betting market had him still as a strong favourite to win, and he certainly commanded strong support among Liberal Party members.
Of course, in the most important Anglosphere country of them all, the United States, there was a Democrat as President. Mr. Obama was (and is) probably the most left-leaning President in US history, and certainly in recent times. If you doubt me just go and compare the policies of fellow Democrat President Bill Clinton (free trade, welfare reform, surpluses) to those of Obama. The Republicans had by the middle of last year captured both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But it’s fair to say that the Republican leadership in both those Houses of the legislature was hardly putting Mr. Obama on the spot by forcing him to veto bill after bill. But at least they could block any left-leaning legislative agenda the president might otherwise have in mind – forcing him to try achieving his goals by the back door of executive orders (which can be easily undone when a Republican next wins the White House).
