Liberal seats lost to teals are ‘gone forever’, Nigel Farage says
Controversial conservative commentator Nigel Farage says inner-city seats lost by Liberal MPs are ‘gone’ and the party should forget trying to win them back.
Former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has declared inner-city seats lost by Liberal MPs to teal independents at the May election are “gone” and the party should forget trying to win them back.
The controversial and outspoken conservative commentator said Australia was witnessing the end of the two-party political system “to some extent” and the Liberal Party was in danger if it decided to be “Labor lite”.
Six Liberal MPs in inner-city seats across Sydney, Melbourne and Perth – including former treasurer Josh Frydenberg – lost to teals after the independent candidates pledged stronger action on climate change and a national integrity commission.
“This is the realignment of left-right politics across the Western world,” Mr Farage told The Weekend Australian ahead of a speaking tour, which culminates in a talk at the Conservative Political Action Conference next weekend.
“Those electorates are gone. They’re not coming back to the Australian Liberal Party. They are not coming back to the British Conservative Party, they’re not going to vote Republican in the midterms.
“If the Australian Liberal Party try and pursue that vote in the nice leafy suburbs as it were, I think they’re barking up the wrong tree in every sense.”
Mr Farage said the Liberals should instead target families and individuals who have traditionally voted Labor and were looking for a political party based on nationhood and national security.
“The danger for the Liberal Party if they decide to be Labor lite, if they decide to try and go for the teals and please the international community, is there will be more splits than there are already on the right of Australian politics,” he said. “The new people who are conservatives are families who traditionally would have been Labor, much more working class, much more likely to be skilled and semi-skilled workers.”
His comments will be hotly contested by moderate Liberals, including those who lost their seats to teals and plan to run again. Senior moderate Liberal MP and frontbencher Simon Birmingham has argued the party’s approach on gender, diversity and climate change helped lead to its defeat.
Mr Farage insisted the Morrison government’s loss was because it stopped being conservative after adopting a net-zero emissions target and “embracing” Covid-19 lockdowns.
The states were responsible for lockdowns while the federal government controlled Australia’s international border.
“Morrison’s dash to join the woke capitalists and the international club was profoundly unconservative. The failure to understand I think became obvious as the months went by that the costs of lockdown were far greater than any benefits that could’ve come from it,” Mr Farage said, adding that Australia’s mandatory five-day Covid isolation periods were “absolutely insane”.
“Australia went so over the top. I thought the effective imprisonment of Novak Djokovic summed up where Australia had got to. Covid-19 is not a threat at the moment of any significant kind at all and it’s about time people wised up.
“Indeed in Denmark yesterday they stopped all vaccinations for under-50s. Australia is behind the curve on recognising the magnitude of the mistakes we made in dealing with the problem.”
Health Minister Mark Butler said earlier this week Covid-19 was “still a very substantial risk to the community”, with around 45 families on average losing a loved one each day and immense pressure on the health and hospital systems due to ongoing infection.
During Mr Farage’s tour he will warn that Western civilisation is under threat externally from China and internally from “woke capitalism”.
Reflecting on Australian politics, he said one of the Albanese government’s signature election promises to prioritise enshrining a voice to parliament in the Constitution was “incredibly dangerous” and “sounds like a recipe for division and racial disharmony”.
More Coverage
Anti-Semitism: ALP to ‘pay heavy price at poll’
A Labor life member says the party will ‘pay a heavy price at the ballot box’ for failing to act decisively on anti-Semitism, and Jewish Labor voters will abandon Anthony Albanese.
Academics ‘open door to Jew hate’
Marcia Langton, one of the nation’s most eminent professors, has accused university bosses of failing to call police when criminal activity occurred and allowing ‘anti-Semitic protagonists’ to hijack campuses.