Adem Somyurek: What the bloodied Liberal Party can learn from Labor’s factions
The Liberal leadership would be wise to note how Daniel Andrews successfully pivoted to the woke agenda when Labor went through its own bitter internal division.
Opinion
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The turmoil currently engulfing the Liberal Party results from its inability to reach a consensus in how to respond to the electoral threat posed by the woke movement’s rights-based radical social agenda.
When political parties are in a crisis over values and policy direction, the debate is often passionate and can descend into personal feuds quickly.
In the Liberals, historically, there has been tension between the small-l liberals and the conservatives.
Culture wars triggered by the woke movement have brought divisions to the surface in a most unpleasant way.
Labor went through its own bitter internal division in trying to counter the electoral threat posed by the woke movement’s radical social agenda a decade and a half before the Liberals are confronting it. Unlike the Libs, Labor managed its crises without public bloodletting.
The Liberal leadership would be wise to note how Daniel Andrews successfully pivoted to the woke agenda away from the centrist Bracks and Brumby Labor governments, which were focused on sound economic management rather than radical social reform.
A popular myth has emerged that Andrews dragged the Labor Party kicking and screaming and radically repositioned it to a party of the woke movement.
In reality, Andrews was not the imperious leader in opposition that he is now in government. He faced organised opposition in caucus committed to tearing him down as payback for his factional skulduggery over the years. Rather than a “strong man”, Andrews was a nervous leader who spent most of his time trying to ingratiate himself with his internal enemies. His objective was survival as leader until the election, not creating more enemies.
Even though I also had a long and, at times, antagonistic history with Andrews, my part of the Right supported him because we were determined to win back government after only one term in opposition. Having recently witnessed the federal Labor Party implode due to the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd wars, we knew we could not win by deposing a leader.
But we did not give Andrews a blank cheque. We expected Andrews to adopt a sensible policy agenda geared towards winning the next election, not to pursue marginal Socialist Left policy frolics.
The loss of the traditionally safe federal Labor seat of Melbourne in 2010, followed by a tight victory in the once-safe state seat of Melbourne in a by-election in 2012, increased the level of panic within the party and took the talk of existential crisis to a fever pitch.
Andrews persuaded us to shift our position on dealing with the apparent existential threat through research showing that the traditional Labor materialist policy prescriptions in increasing post-materialist demographics were not cutting through. These electors in the inner-city Labor seats of Melbourne, Northcote, Richmond and Brunswick cared less about Labor’s record of building schools and hospitals and jobs and more about non-material issues such as identity politics.
Given the Right’s main criticism of the SL was that it would rather be in opposition and remain ideologically pure than be in government, we could not push back when evidence was presented that we could retain the four inner-city seats under threat by the Greens.
We agreed on the new strategy provided the new woke agenda was narrowcast only to the four inner-city seats, so it would not contaminate our outer suburban and regional marginal seat campaigns.
Had Andrews decided he was a visionary reformer who would drag the party kicking and screaming to adopt the woke agenda without presenting research to show electoral dividends, he would not have made it to the election as leader.
The Liberal leadership would be wise to adopt Andrews’ approach of establishing a case with research on the electoral benefits of “modernising” the party rather than creating a blood feud that will make it even more difficult to reconcile later.
On the other hand, conservatives need to decide whether they want to be like Socialist Left radicals in Labor, to be ideologically pure and remain in opposition, venting their frustration at weekly protest rallies. Or would they rather win office and incrementally roll back the Andrews excesses and errors.
Surviving the new politics dominated by social policy rather than the safe terrain of economic policy requires the Liberal Party to be honest with itself. It cannot continue to downplay the reality that it is a fusion of two divergent and increasingly incompatible world views.
This necessitates mechanisms and structures that allow for power sharing and dealing with policy direction in a formal, orderly and dispassionate manner, thus easing the personality-based conflict that comes with debating issues that go to the heart of what the party represents.
The Labor Party calls these mechanisms and structures factions. When genuine policy disagreement is the cause of internal disagreement rather than a grab for power, factions are effective as they impose discipline and accountability, and in doing so deny potential terrorists oxygen.
Democratic Labour Party MP Adem Somyurek is a former Labor Party MP
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