Take a long-standing political party.  Make it one that has been the dominant political force in its country, historically the most successful, the natural party of government. Let’s make it a right-of-centre, largely conservative political party. Let’s also say that right up to and during Covid it had been in office for quite a while, having won multiple elections on the trot. All that electoral success, however, did not stop this party from knifing its leaders – the country’s serving prime ministers – on multiple occasions. Nor did this party cover itself in glory during those Covid years. Despite billing itself as a party that favoured small government and individual freedom, both were thrown out the window by this party as it aped the authoritarian, thuggish Covid response of the Chinese Communist Politburo – lockdowns, school closures, weaponised police, massive spending, press propaganda and censorship, ballooning debt, asset inflation that transferred huge wealth from poor to rich and young to old, inane rules made up out of thin air and ones that favoured the public sector over the small business sector, its natural supporters. Vaccine mandates were imposed. Any ability to present itself as the party of careful economic management was sacrificed on the altar of a fearmongering, panicked lockdown insanity. Also out the window went any plausible claim the party might have to care about individual freedom, including free speech.

And then there was the way in which this long-established political party, while in office, threw open the country’s doors to mass immigration – driving house prices up beyond the reach of most young people not born into substantial wealth while going some way to undermining social cohesion.  Meantime, despite a carefully manicured self-image for shunning ideology in favour of pragmatism and common sense, the party leaders opted to go all in on the near-religious crusade known as net zero, with all the rent-seeking renewables subsidies and world’s highest electricity costs that entailed.  No, the party did not take this to an election.  Instead, after an election this party’s PM of the day simply announced it from on high, the better to get in well with the supranationalist set. He opted to throw in the party’s lot with the climate catastrophists and Davos globalists.

All of this saw two things happen. One was that this long-established party’s own MPs solidified into two camps. The moderates, wets, inner-city lefty-lites (call them what you will) on one side. The conservatives, drys, suburban/rural outsiders on the other. The fact is that this old, successful political party had factionalised or bifurcated. And here’s the thing. The party’s base, all those volunteers and paid-up party members, overwhelmingly supported the conservatives. Yet the party machinery had slowly been ever more taken over by the progressive lefty-lites.

By now readers will realise that my above account accurately describes fourteen years of Conservative party rule in the United Kingdom. Then again, it also accurately describes nine years of Liberal party rule here in Australia. Accordingly, there are lessons our Liberal party might learn from what is happening to the British Tory party, the democratic world’s oldest political party.  You see the wet or moderate MPs and party office-holders over there may have taken over the party machinery and installed lefty-lite prime ministers but the party base has revolted. In last year’s election, with a voluntary voting system, many of its core voters stayed home allowing Labour’s Keir Starmer to win a massive majority of the seats with only 34 per cent of the vote, the lowest ever for a party winning a majority government (and lower than 2019 when Labour lost).  Many core Tory voters either stayed home or they voted for the insurgent Reform party led by Nigel Farage. Since then more and more formerly Conservative voters have shifted to the Reform party (which now has more party members than the Tories and soon will have more than Labour). This Reform party now leads in all polls, most by ten points on Labour with the Tories imploding. Incredibly, Reform is even polling in second place in Scotland and Wales behind the nationalist parties. On the current results Nigel Farage will be Britain’s next PM with a huge majority.

I mention that because it gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim that right-of-centre voters want a lefty-lite, moderate, almost-progressive party. Britain shows that is emphatically not true. What is true is that conservative parties can be hijacked by progressives who then steer these long-established parties to deliver results its core voters hate. Nothing to halt the tidal wave of big immigration or to stop the net zero impoverishment or to put a brake on the inroads into free speech or to fight in any way the crucially important culture wars. So as the Tory party had left them, in response their core supporters have gradually (and now increasingly) decided to leave the Tory party. I do not exaggerate in saying that Britain’s Conservative party is today in danger of being replaced as one of the country’s two main parties, something that happens only about once a century in any country with a majoritarian voting system.

So here’s my claim. Australia’s core Liberal party voters are no different from the Conservative party base in Britain. We want a party that offers conservative policies and for a long time now we have not been given that. Peter Dutton and his useless election advisors offered us almost nothing.

The result was the party’s worst-ever first-preference result. Laughably, the lefty-lite MPs continue asserting that the Liberal party needs to press on with its leftward lurch, wilfully blind to what is unfolding in Britain.

There is, of course, one big difference between Britain and here. While many like me would give their right arms for a Farage-like Reform option, Australia’s preferential and compulsory voting systems make that vastly more difficult here. The fact is that preferential voting systems serve as a sort of protection racket for the two main established parties, forcing voters to choose between ‘loathe them’ Tweedledum and ‘despise them’ Tweedledee. That is why preferential voting is almost unheard of in the rest of the democratic world.

Having said that, this week’s severing of the Coalition is very good news. The National party now can make plain it is for huge cuts to immigration, the end of net zero and a push for nuclear. It already has an established brand. I would like to see National-run candidates in all the suburban seats and maybe in every seat in the country.  This would brutally wedge a lefty-Liberal party. With this split there is a bit of hope, in other words.

Meantime the only other remedy in sight is to work to remake the Liberal party rules so that it is party members who pick the leader, as in Canada. That’s why the Canadian Conservative party has near on a million party members and our Liberal party probably has fewer than twenty thousand.  And they have an actual conservative leader and we have a numerologist, Sussan, who in her whole political career has yet to voice a single conservative thought and is babbling on about ‘process’. Look and learn Libs because your core voters are fuming mad.  We are all-in hoping the National party can now offer us conservative voters something because we sure aren’t getting anything from the Libs.