Andrew Bolt: Mission impossible now achievable for Peter Dutton

Anthony Albanese smugly thought Peter Dutton didn’t have a chance. But the “unelectable” Dutton is gone, and a potential prime minister is here.

Peter Dutton now seems more authentic than Anthony Albanese, writes Andrew Bolt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Get used to the sound of it: “Prime Minister Peter Dutton.” What you were told was impossible – laughable – is starting to sound almost inevitable.

How funny. How many times must Labor and the media Left learn there’s no such thing as a Liberal leader “too Right-wing” to win?

This could be the third time they’re smacked in the face by reality.

John Howard was too conservative, they told us. He then won four elections.

Then it was Tony Abbott who was “too Right-wing” with his promise to turn back the boats and axe the carbon tax. Yet Abbott beat Labor’s Captain Climate, Kevin Rudd.

Now with the conservative ex-copper Dutton in charge there’s been that same lazy assumption that the Liberals are doomed.

Fancy Dutton opposing Labor’s Aboriginal-only Voice to Parliament! How evil, and how dumb to also carp at Labor’s massive plans to cut the coal and switch our power system to wind and solar.

Peter Dutton is no longer unelectable as Anthony Albanese thought. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

Jeering cartoonists even drew Dutton, made bald by alopecia, as a potato or the evilly hairless Voldemort of the Harry Potter series. “Voldemort!” sniggered Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

Did this mass mockery of Dutton blind Anthony Albanese, our current and now crippled Labor prime minister, to the growing threat?

Certainly Labor MPs and insiders now privately admit Albanese smugly thought Dutton unelectable. Maybe that’s why Albanese felt he could take so many trips overseas, with nothing to beat at home.

Story after newspaper story by his fellow travellers fed his fantasy.

There was the ABC’s Alan Kohler, a climate alarmist, warning last year the Liberals “could keep losing into oblivion”. In February, an Age columnist snarked: “Dutton is driving the Liberals off a cliff.”

April was the cruellest month for Dutton. The Monthly, hard Left and anti-Israel, ran with: “Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party is totally unelectable.”

Michelle Grattan, chief political correspondent for the taxpayer-funded The Conversation, predicted “over coming months it’s likely there will be muttering and undermining of Dutton” by Liberal MPs.

Peter Dutton didn’t support the Voice to Parliament. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

How comically wrong they were.

The latest Newspoll has the Coalition under Dutton 50-50 with the fast-sinking Albanese Government, and it’s Albanese who’s in strife as the contrast between the two leaders grows more obvious.

Dutton, long mocked for seeming too hard, now simply looks strong. Even if you don’t like him, he also seems more authentic and busier with the here and now of voters’ lives.

Albanese, who started off seeming a plain-speaking man of the people, has morphed instead into a how-good-is-this freeloader, drinking at the tennis or happily skipping up the stairs of his VIP jet to be pampered abroad, the Chinese dictatorship patronising him as a “handsome boy”.

Far from being in touch with the lives here of battlers, Albanese looks obsessed with the semi-religious crusades of the inner-urban elite – with the disastrous Voice, now dead, and his global warming circus that takes money from bill-paying workers and hands it to rich carpet-baggers of the green-energy scam.

Anthony Albanese has morphed into a ‘how-good-is-this’ freeloader who attends the tennis when he’s not on his VIP jet abroad.

Voters are now picking up on the change. Redbridge, the Labor-aligned pollster, found focus groups of voters in marginal seats rated Albanese as “weak”, “bland” and a “beta male” who was a ‘follower, not a leader’ and not doing enough to lower the cost of living.

Part of this transformation is a credit to Dutton. He skilfully kept his party more or less united while still offering a real policy contest, arguing for Liberal principles without going too hard too soon. Watch now the debate on nuclear power.

But much of his rise is thanks to the bungling of Albanese, who has played to all Dutton’s strengths. Albanese pushed the divisive Voice, making Dutton the traditionalist seem a uniter. Albanese is still pushing the global warming policies that make electricity more expensive, helping Dutton the sceptic seem safer.

Anthony Albanese looks obsessed with inner-urban elites.

Albanese’s incompetence – especially on immigration – has also boosted Dutton. Dutton’s toughness from years as a successful immigration minister now seem exactly what’s missing as this government lets immigration levels explode, gives 860 Palestinians visas without proper security checks, lets a boat of illegal immigrants land here, and sets free more than 140 foreigners from immigration detention – including murderers and rapists – without real monitoring.

Sure, Albanese still has 18 months to readjust, but he’s dealt Dutton back into the game just when Labor faces headwinds: persistent inflation and low growth, while real wages keep falling.

Dutton could still lose the next election, given he’s so many seats behind. But the “unelectable” Dutton is gone, and a potential Prime Minister is here.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Mission impossible now achievable for Peter Dutton