Joe Hildebrand: Labor must put aside its social media socialists

Overprivileged social media socialists need to stop telling ordinary Australians what to think, and for Labor to instead listen to what they really do think, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Socialism is a plaything of the rich. The very authors of The Communist Manifesto were the original one percenters: Marx the son of an upper-middle-class lawyer whose family owned multiple vineyards, and Engels the heir to an empire of cotton mills.

They had no genuine experience of poverty or the working class. Instead they surveyed and studied poor people, as an animal liberationist might pity the elephants in a zoo.

The tradition of angry rich theoretical leftists continues – as I and others have often railed against and as any number of Extinction Rebellion rap sheets will attest – however, shocking weekend poll results show that this sociopolitical identity crisis has now reached a tipping point.

Up until this point, suburban battlers and inner-city luvvies managed to co-exist within Labor for about half a century with only occasional bloodshed.

This was because Labor’s sensible right wing held dominance, especially during the brilliant and unmatched Hawke-Keating era.

The PM now faces a potential existential threat if bombshell polling numbers are anything to go by. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

As the running in-joke of countless party conferences went, it was a perfect arrangement in which everybody got what they wanted: the right got to win and the left got to go down fighting.

But the pendulum has now swung ever so slightly so that the left now holds a majority at National Conference and in most states and territories, the shining aberrations being NSW and South Australia – who also have the handsomest premiers, just saying.

The right’s only salvation, ironically enough, has been Anthony Albanese, a former factional war lord of the left who has heroically resisted the lunar demands of his erstwhile comrades to keep the party on a straight and centred course as Prime Minister.

But in politics, unlike religion, salvation is fleeting, not eternal. And Albo now faces a potential existential threat if bombshell RedBridge polling numbers are anything to go by.

The numbers are significant for both what they are and who they come from.

Redbridge was co-founded by Kos Samaras, a former senior Victorian Labor figure who has been an outspoken and often lonely voice on the need for Labor to reconnect with working-class and migrant communities.

As for the numbers themselves, they are brutal.

Labor’s sensible right wing held dominance, especially during the brilliant and unmatched Hawke-Keating era.

In August, RedBridge had Labor leading the Coalition 39 per cent to 28 per cent among voters with year 12 or equivalent and 36 to 29 among voters with a TAFE, trade or vocational education.

But by last week support for the major parties had reversed, with the Coalition leading Labor 37 per cent to 28 per cent with year 12 or equivalent voters, and even among TAFE, trade or vocationally trained voters – the very definition of the educated working class – the Coalition now leads 35 per cent to 33 per cent.

This is not the kind of wake-up call where someone shoves a piece of paper under a leader’s nose and he raises his eyebrows. It is the kind of wake-up call where someone pours a bucket of ice water over your head and then slaps your face for good measure.

If this continues, the Labor Party won’t just have to change its policies. It will have to change its name.

We saw this in the Victorian state election in which Dan Andrews picked up once-unwinnable seats in leafy Liberal electorates while losing votes in western suburbs heartlands.

NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns presents a formidable cultural and philosophical barrier to his own party’s irrational left wing. Picture: Monique Harmer

That might be seen as a cunning steal, but it also leaves Labor exposed to cunning Teals. If rich progressives are Labor’s new base, how long before their more affluent seats start falling to preachy doctors as quickly as the inner suburbs have fallen to the Greens?

Meanwhile, the Teal incursion has not only made Peter Dutton opposition leader but forced him to focus wholly on precisely those outer suburban and regional voters who Labor desperately need to secure re-election. If only an uncannily good-looking newspaper columnist had warned of this at the time!

Dan Andrews picked up once-unwinnable seats in leafy Liberal electorates while losing votes in western suburbs heartlands.

And so these are the questions that Labor needs to ask itself:

How do typically mainstream middle Australians of Lindsay and Longman view Labor from their heavily mortgaged McMansions of outer Sydney and Brisbane?

How do the traditional working-class and migrant voters of Labor strongholds in western Sydney and Melbourne know that this is a party that is still of them, that still shares their values and aspirations?

How ready is the party for another Dai Le. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

And how ready is the party for another Dai Le, or a hundred Dai Les in every safe seat in the country?

This is an existential threat, but the good news is there is a clear pathway to survival. The problem is hard but the solution is easy.

All it requires is today’s overprivileged social media socialists to stop telling ordinary people what to think, and for Labor to instead listen to what they really do think.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Labor must put aside its social media socialists