I previously wrote that the evil of wokeism and its destruction of humanity’s crowning achievement, Western culture, is only triumphing because too many conservatives are too gutless to stop it. But it’s not all bad news.
Sure, if you’re reading this from Australia or New Zealand, it would look very much the case. Where Scott Morrison disappointed a generation of Australian conservatives, Chris Luxon is saying, “Hold my almond milk latte.”
Overseas, though, it’s nowhere near so bleak. Sweden has not just ousted the ruling leftists, it has replaced them with, not the yellow-bellied establishment “conservatives”, but the much harder-nosed Sweden Democrats. As even leftist bible Crikey admits Sweden has done a hard-right turn precisely because the left went so far left.
Europe’s Left continues to learn the hard way what the ALP finally understood under Rudd and Gillard – that voters don’t like open borders or being told that if they object to radical changes to their society they’re racist.
Still, the Euro-elite continue to push the same disastrous, open borders policies. Instead of turning back the flotillas of people smugglers crossing the Mediterranean (or better yet, torpedoing them on sight), the EU escorts them to European ports and a lifetime of free welfare and handily rape-able women. The EU powerhouses, France and Germany, have so far seen off conservative challenges. But elsewhere, the bell is tolling for the left consensus.
In Sweden, as noticed, the rightist victory is due primarily to the hardest-right faction of the conservative coalition, the unapologetically anti-“immigrant” SD. In Italy, discontent over open borders is translating directly to rising popularity of right-wing parties, ahead of elections just days away.
Polls show that the right-wing bloc of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia should comfortably defeat the government led by the centre-left Democratic party since 2019. Like the Sweden Democrats, Meloni’s party has shot out of nowhere to become Italy’s most popular right-wing party – in 2018 it had 4.3 per cent support and now has 25 per cent.
As the leader of the largest party, Meloni would be prime minister (and Italy’s first-ever woman leader). Salvini would probably again be deputy prime minister and interior minister, as he was in the right-wing coalition government he dominated in 2018-19. In that role he displayed an impressive Tony Abbott-like ability to stop the boats, virtually putting an end to the people-smuggling trade which had brought 620,000 illegal immigrants from Africa from 2014 to 2017. He’ll probably do so again.
In Britain, Liz Truss promises to “govern as a conservative”. But then, Boris Johnson said the same thing.
There are promising signs she’ll be good to her word: she’s suspended green levies from energy bills and is giving priority to energy security over climate change, with a go-ahead to fracking and new North Sea oil and gas projects. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who outraged the climate lobby in April by saying he wanted ‘every last drop’ of oil and gas from the North Sea, has been appointed the cabinet minister responsible for energy. And new Home Secretary Suella Braverman is more likely to be effective in stopping the boats than her hapless predecessor Priti Patel.
Spectator Australia
Across the Atlantic, things are looking just as bright, despite the Dark Clouds of Brandon.
The US mid-term elections are under two months away. Forget any poll that over-samples Democrats, though bizarrely most US polls do. Barring some big political event in the next seven or eight weeks the Republicans will retake the House of Representatives […]
The left-leaning US press is saying the odds favour the Dems to keep Senate control. I’m betting they’re wrong and the Republicans win the Senate, picking up a net two spots, maybe even three.
Heading north, Justin Trudeau was lucky to cling on in 2021. But his bizarrely authoritarian overreaction to the trucker protests has angered and motivated a great many Canadians, who suddenly found themselves branded “violent extremists”. Not only has “TrudeauMustGo” trended for days on end on left-dominated Twitter, but grass-roots Canadians are rising up to wrest democratic power back from Establishment Conservatives.
The Conservative (or Tory) party has now chosen its new leader. In Canada the decision was taken completely out of the hands of the partyroom – you’ll be shocked to hear the view was that politicians were out of touch with the base, the party members. Party members over several months vote for their preferred leader. And the most right-leaning, conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre has won […]
The horror of it all – a conservative party led by an actual conservative proposing to do conservative things (and, for that matter, to appoint actual conservatives to commissions, tribunals, the courts and the rest).
Spectator Australia
Poilievre, like Trump, horrifies the conservative Establishment, but electrifies the rank-and-file. Canada’s Establishment are horrified by a policy such as defunding the taxpayer-funded broadcaster the CBC, but the Conservative party base love it. If only Peter Dutton had the cojones to promise Australian voters a similar deal.
Because, here’s the weird thing: “smart” conservative policymakers keep playing catch-up with the lunar left – and losing.
Meanwhile, “populism” – meaning, popular opinions not approved by the left-Establishment – keep winning.
It’s almost like there’s something NZ’s National could learn from all this.