Scott Morrison is not a leader to get bogged down by his critics

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Let us assume that the Twittering classes got it wrong and that Malcolm Turnbull was not evicted by a “lunatic fringe”, as one commentator wrote last week. Let’s suppose that a country that changes prime ministers five times in nine years is not, as the Crikey commentator claimed, “an international laughing stock”, but a robust democracy where leaders who lose the confidence of their colleagues become ex-leaders.

These days that judgment is made sooner rather than later, thanks to Newspoll. Some of us can still remember when prime ministers gave valedictory speeches on election nights, rather than on a random Friday afternoon.

There are surely better metrics for tracking the performance of Liberal PMs, perhaps the number of ­unfavourable mentions in The Guardian Australia, the journal that labelled Scott Morrison the “compromise candidate”.

It was an outrageous slur. Consensus, as Margaret Thatcher once said, is “the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects”. Morrison is too smart for that.

Liberals have high expectations of their leaders after John Howard, who Kevin Rudd cunningly tried to undermine by describing him as “the most clever politician this country has produced”. It is ­unlikely Labor would have tried to use that line against Turnbull or Tony Abbott. But then, that judgment came after Howard’s fourth election victory, not his first.

The political terrain has changed since Howard came to power. In 1996 fewer than one household in 20 had access to the internet; today more than four out of five Australians spend part of every day online.

Technology does not excuse political failure but it helps explain it. Far from bringing people ­together, as we once thought, the internet has made us strangers to one another. Opposing views are reinforced by dwelling in the ­regions of cyberspace where everyone thinks the same.

Five years ago, I drew attention to this divide in The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class, noting that political leaders, Labor and Liberal, were paying a high price for following outdated maps of the cultural landscape.

The expansion of higher education had created the graduate class, people who see the world in abstract terms and adopt a different set of manners. Back then the cultural divide was most visible in the Labor Party but it was present in the Liberal Party too.

The divide is not peculiar to Australia. Whatever else Donald Trump achieves, he is unlikely to unify the Republican Party. Yet if he were to waver in the convictions that so irritate the party’s establishment, his presidency would be as good as dead.

In Britain the Conservatives don’t know which way to turn, pessimistic about their chances of winning an election under Theresa May but nervous about Boris Johnson’s popular touch.

The challenge of remaining popular in two opposing moral universes is beyond dog-whistling. There is no fence to sit on. You cannot be in favour of staying in Europe and leaving it. Like competing Aboriginal tribes, the two constituencies ­attach themselves to totems that define their moral universes. Just as the snake people and the lizard people were permitted to gorge on the other tribe’s totem but forbidden to eat their own, the two constituencies define themselves by their disgust at the other’s ­behaviour.

By comparison, the Liberal Party of Australia appears to be in rude good health. Its performance in government has been remarkable under the circumstances. A million new jobs in five years is no mean achievement. Growth in government expenditure has been contained and the budget is heading back to surplus.

Reform has been enacted ­instinctively rather than with fanfare. Abbott’s resistance to the car industry’s demand for subsidies was a landmark in the wind-back of protectionism. Abbott broke the stalemate in free trade deals.

There have been significant ­reforms to the welfare system. The number of applicants for the Disability Support Pension has ­dropped from 89,000 in 2009-10 to 32,000 in 2016-17. The cashless welfare card has delivered measurable improvements to life in welfare-dominated communities.

There have been improvements to immigration policy, with a more selective approach to the issuing of humanitarian visas and an explicit shift to integration.

The party’s parliamentary team is not lacking in talent as a generation inspired to enter politics under Howard moves up the ranks. Yet even the most talented struggle to frame the Liberal narrative as Howard once did, let alone with the clarity that enabled the party’s intellectual father, Robert Menzies, to govern for more than 16 years.

Attempts to appeal to voters across the cultural divide sow confusion. The dread of appearing strident is mistaken for a lack of conviction. Risk-averse rhetoric communicates nothing except hesitancy. They are wasting their time. The Twitterers will find something to offend them anyway, while talkback radio hosts ­accuse them of going soft.

Adding to the timidity is the distorted picture one gets of Australia from Parliament House. The lanyard-wearing millennials who pass themselves off as advisers have little idea where most people stand on the totemic issues of the day, and indeed whether they’re obliged to have an opinion at all.

In Scott Morrison, we have a prime minister with a better feel than most for suburban sentiment. His determination to take the ­argument outside the beltway is apparent in his choice of ministers, and the informal titles he ­bestowed on them. Angus Taylor, the Minister for Getting ­Energy Prices Down, and Alan Tudge, the Minister for Congestion Busting, are two of the most persuasive voices in parliament.

He surrounds himself with grown-ups and appreciates that the demographic the Coalition needs to work hardest to win are not the hipsters but those who grew up listening to the Easybeats.

His time as immigration minister will have left him in no doubt about the intelligentsia’s lack of judgment. Elections are won with votes, not applause lines on Q&A.

Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre.