The Coalition is suffering from a worrying case of identity crisis — and the election results have only proven it

The Coalition has been left licking its wounds after Labor’s nationwide election assault, proving the party is suffering from a deeply ingrained identity crisis, writes James Morrow.

ANALYSIS

The Liberal-National Coalition is in deep trouble, going backwards at an election where the issues of debt, defence, and energy prices should have all played into their hands.

Yet instead of keeping the momentum it gained during the Voice campaign, and capitalising on a series of brewing national security and economic crises, the Coalition all but ran dead since the start of the year.

Rather than behaving like a hard, experienced political player and former minister, Peter Dutton campaigned performing more backflips than an Olympic gymnast.

At the same time, he and his team allowed Labor run vicious and predictable scare campaigns, at the same time hiding star performers like Andrew Hastie, Jacinta Nampjinpa Price, and Barnaby Joyce.

Frankly, it is no wonder that Peter Dutton lost his seat as part of Saturday night’s historic bloodbath, or that the Liberal Party is now facing a crisis that can only be described as existential.

“Labor light” is a term that is thrown around a lot to describe when the Liberals swing too hard towards their moderate wing, which seems to live in terror that they might cop criticism from the ABC and their viewers who would never vote Coalition anyway.

Yet even that is too generous to a Coalition campaign that let Labor move to the right of them on tax cuts (as meagre as they might be).

At the heart of the Coalition’s problem is a deep identity crisis that has been building within the Liberals since John Howard left office that has seen the old “big tent” in danger of tearing itself apart and collapsing. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Compared with Labor, who ran a brutally cynical campaign to cement themselves in power using every lever of government largesse, the Liberal Party appears to have forgotten its reason for being and who it is supposed to represent.

If the Coalition is going to survive, the Liberal Party needs to figure out who they are (the Nationals have a far more coherent identity), and unapologetically re-embrace the conservative values that they seemed to run from during the 2025 campaign.

If they do not, then eventually the whole thing will fall apart and the once-proud party of Robert Menzies will go the way of Britain’s Tories, who are being decimated by Nigel Farage’s right wing Reform movement despite the so called “Trump effect” supposedly putting parties on the nose.

The only way through is for the Liberals to dig deep and rebuild their intellectual base, not just policies but an understanding of who they represent and what their values are. Going back and reading Menzies’ speeches on the “forgotten people” would be a good place to start.

There are other things that must be done as well, on a more practical level.

Under Dutton, who shied away from tough interviews and preferred softball talkback appearances, the party seemed to run from the press.

Yet to win, and to hone their arguments, they need to communicate, and they need to get their message out to those who might not normally hear them.

The Liberals also need to recommit to the free market, and fighting deficits, and making the case that the new Labor settlement that sees government intervention and subsidy at every moment in Australians’ the norm.

And they need to fight tough.

The Liberals seemed scared of their own shadow, and let Labor win with a symphony of lies so grand it could be performed at the Opera House.

If they do not, they will be monstered from the left, and lose support to the right, until the point that the centre-right cannot hold, and they go the way of countless other now defunct parties.

Originally published as The Coalition is suffering from a worrying case of identity crisis — and the election results have only proven it