Britain's record-smashing July 4 election has provided many pointers. Some will be learned and others used by those intent on widening divisions.
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In victory or defeat, political practitioners tend to work backwards, starting with where they are, and organising the causative factors in order to suit their arguments. And their remedies.
When the outgoing Tory health secretary Andrea Leadsom was asked about the historic voter rejection of the 14-year Conservative government, her unhesitating diagnosis was "we've not been conservative enough". It was a view echoing around a besieged party which had lost a colossal 251 seats in one election.
Tellingly, Leadsom rated immigration and small boat arrivals as the core vulnerabilities for defeated PM Rishi Sunak. Expect to hear more of this gently dog-whistled xenophobia despite a Westminster boasting greater ethnic diversity than at any previous time.
By "not conservative enough" Leadsom probably meant 'not populist enough' now the Conservatives' nightmare of being cannibalised by Nigel Farage's Reform UK is under way.
Farage's victim-laden appeal will be aided by big flaws in Britain's electoral system which is now edging close to untenable.
Like the crisis now engulfing US politics, these events serve as a reminder of Australia's vastly superior democratic machinery - compulsory preferential voting run by an independent federal electoral commission.
American democracy, too, is in a parlous state. An infirm Joe Biden can't be replaced even by his party despite critical failings and the electoral machinery is a farrago of dodgy state systems designed to achieve voter suppression and fuel partisan suspicions.
According to the Parliamentary Education Office, Australia has achieved 90 per cent voter turnout in every federal election for the past century, whereas in Britain, turnout was just 60 per cent.
Of that, Labour got only one-third (34 per cent) but snared nearly two-thirds of the seats (63 per cent). Reform UK came in third place overall, with a 14 per cent share of the national vote and just 1 per cent of the seats. Compared to the Liberals Democrats, Reform UK did very poorly. With its 12 per cent vote share the Lib Dems picked up a stunning 63 new seats in its 71-strong total, accounting for 11 per cent of Commons's seats.
Despite its low five-seat haul, Farage's party is set to become the big new destabiliser. Shattered Tories are divided about confronting him or capitulating. Some have talked about a merger and others have even whispered about the Tory leadership. Farage is dreaming big.
"This is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you," Farage proclaimed.
"There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and we intend to fill it."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer plans to counterbalance that chaos with a new sense of order. He is only the fourth leader to take Labour into government, which is even more remarkable when you consider between 2016 and 2022, the Tories had no fewer than five PMs (David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Sunak).
On the most superficial and optimistic reading, Britons have turned away from the intoxicating fringes of resentment and nostalgia-based populism, towards sensible centrism, orthodox steady-as-she-goes, delivery-focused government. They have rejected what Starmer frequently referred to as "performative" politics.
This seems true, but closer inspection reveals something in common with our 2022 result - a low level of enthusiasm for an incoming social democratic party masked by a high level of anger at the last mob.
An election marked not by an enthusiasm for the new so much as an overweening despair at the old. Labor here got a primary vote of 32.6 per cent nationally. British Labour was hardly better at 34 per cent.
But for all this, there is no arguing with his parliamentary numbers. A stunning 412 seats and a parliamentary majority of 179.
Quite rightly, "Starmer's tsunami" is the headline story of the election given some argued in 2019 Labour would never recover from Corbynism. Somehow, this uncharismatic, even "dull" figure dragged Labour from a roiling party of warring tribes to a safe option for government. It was a journey from the wilderness of its worst result to the triumph of one of its best, in a single term.
The question going forward, however, is how strong his mandate is and how durable will be his electoral support? He stresses patience, but can expect no real honeymoon.
READ MORE MARK KENNY:
With right-wing populism apparently on the rise in democracies of Europe and the United States, the wins by Starmer and Anthony Albanese before him, suggest four things.
First, divisive campaigning which exploits rather than solves problems can be defeated by solid and constructive policies which target ordinary people and reach across the middle-ground.
Second, survival for mainstream parties turns on their ability to listen to voters, and to recognise populism attracts not merely because the fringes are more exciting but because in many ways, the centre has actually failed. Decades of neoliberalism have diminished the very purpose of governments, institutions and norms in the eyes of many voters.
Third, small targets lead to thin mandates.
Fourth, even with his success, Starmer lost half-a-dozen safe Labour seats in areas of high Muslim populations - a result connected to the moral morass of Israel-Gaza policy.
A morass every bit as topical here right now.
- Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast.