Orange is the New Blue. By Nathan Porter in The Spectator.
I am no longer a card-carrying Liberal. I’ve quit.
I didn’t leave because I abandoned Menzies’ principles. I left because the Liberals did. …
New members are called and vetted to ensure they are not ‘someone’s’ person. Joined Family First once? Rejected. Mutual friends with a conservative? Rejected. The Liberal Party doesn’t want new members….
I’ve joined One Nation.
Here’s the greatest trick the moderates ever pulled: convincing educated conservatives that supporting Australian workers, sustainable immigration, and energy security was somehow ‘unsophisticated’. When did wanting affordable housing become bogan? When did questioning immigration become racist rather than economically rational? When did insisting that Australians should benefit from Australia’s resources become populist rather than patriotic? …
I joined the Liberal Party for real issues. … I care that I’ll never be able to afford to buy in my city, let alone the suburb I grew up in. I care that we never took a vote on the quantity and quality of people coming into our country and that now it’s illegal to question that.
These are not fringe concerns. They are the central questions facing Australia’s future. And the ‘natural party of government’ won’t touch them.
The New Class took over the Liberal Party, which was formed specifically to oppose the New Class, to represent the “forgotten people”:
Dinner-party liberalism has destroyed what remained of the Liberal Party.
One Nation’s growth isn’t happening despite its positions on immigration, national identity, and Australian sovereignty. It’s happening because of them.
The Australian people are well ahead of our political class on these issues. They know that the Australian dream won’t suddenly return by servicing more debt, but by fewer people competing for housing, jobs, and services. They know our current energy policy is national economic suicide. They know that criticising mass migration is not the root cause of declining social cohesion, rising crime, and antisemitism.
One Nation better grow up fast:
And One Nation isn’t what it used to be either. It’s no longer a one-woman protest movement. The party has developed serious policy depth, attracted credible candidates with business and professional backgrounds, and demonstrated it will work constructively in parliaments across Australia.
And then there’s Barnaby Joyce, a former Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Prime Minister of Australia. Barnaby speaks for the everyman and when the everyman who held the second-highest office in the land chooses One Nation over the Nationals, that tells you something about where genuine conservatism now lives.
One Nation, easily derided and starved of talent, has long been the opposition preferred by the New Class. Not controlled opposition exactly, but ineffectual opposition. Tolerated and preferred by the New Class, who made serious contenders for the role of opposition (e.g. Cory Bernadi) go away by starving them of media attention. But now One Nation threatens to outgrow its previously assigned role as the patsy party:
Yes, One Nation has baggage. But name me a party that doesn’t. The difference? One Nation’s errors have been amplified and weaponised because the party threatens the comfortable consensus of Australia’s political class. When Pauline Hanson warns about unsustainable immigration, she’s ‘divisive’ and ‘dangerous’. When the Reserve Bank issues reports saying exactly the same thing in more technical language, it’s ‘economic analysis’.
The double standard is deliberate. It’s designed to keep conservatives corralled in a Liberal Party that no longer represents them. I joined One Nation because conservatism feels vital here again. Not performative. Not managed. Not focus-grouped into meaninglessness.
There’s an energy that comes from actually believing your party will fight for its principles rather than triangulate them away.
Who said Australia was immune to the forces that swept Trump and Farage to prominence?
hat-tip Stephen Neil