It's just a jump to the right

Preparing ourselves for the inevitable conservative insanity

As Sweden, the UK and Italy—and, of course, the United States—struggle with the growing presence of various shades of populist authoritarianism, nativists conservatism, and anti-democratic electoral and institutional manipulation, Australia can take some comfort from the results of the last federal election.

Not only did we remove from power a Pentecostalist narcissist with delusions of grandeur and little respect for democratic conventions, we did it in a way that kicked a big hole in the power base of the nation’s main conservative formation, the Liberal-National Party Coalition. We took the next step towards installing a permanent, unaligned 30-odd per cent block of voters who will likely never vote for the majors again. We started developing an infrastructure for that 30 per cent to maintain itself, based in the methodology of a particular form of local engagement through independents and smaller parties, and all together, this really has been a major achievement.

But as we breathe …