The Australian political landscape, already as exciting as a wet Sunday in Adelaide, has just been gifted a new layer of beige. A gaggle of independent MPs, apparently inspired by the British crossbench model, have launched a centrist party. One can almost hear the collective yawn from here.
Let us examine this phenomenon with the cold eye of history. The British crossbench model, you see, is not some ancient democratic tradition. It is a peculiar relic of the House of Lords, a chamber of unelected peers that somehow manages to be both revered and irrelevant. To admire it is to admire the decorative plasterwork on a sinking ship. The crossbenchers are, by design, a collection of experts, former civil servants, and the occasional oddball. They have no mandate. They have no constituency. They are the political equivalent of a fudge factor, a gentle buffer against the rough edges of party discipline.
But what do the Australians propose? A party of the centre. The centre. In an age of collapse, when empires fracture and civilisations crumble, when the very notion of the nation state is under siege by global capital and woke dogma, they offer us ... the centre. It is like offering a glass of lukewarm water to a man dying of thirst. It will not save him. It will merely remind him of what he has lost.
The independent MPs who have cobbled this thing together are, by all accounts, perfectly reasonable people. They have sensible hair and sensible opinions. They worry about the deficit and the cost of living. They are the sort of people who write letters to the editor about potholes. And they are precisely the sort of people who cannot see that the world is burning around them. The decline of the West is not a problem to be solved by a committee. It is a tragedy to be endured or a revolution to be embraced.
Look at the great intellectual decadence of our age. The universities, once bastions of reason, now parrot the jargon of the oppressor and the oppressed. The arts, once a fount of beauty, now celebrate the ugly and the inane. The very language we speak is being shredded into a grotesque parody of itself. And the centre? The centre says: let us have a bipartisan commission to study this. Let us have a taskforce. Let us have a crossbench.
No. The crossbench is not the answer. The answer is to pick a side. Are you for the nation or against it? For history or against it? For excellence or mediocrity? The Australians, with their sunny disposition and their love of a fair go, have chosen the third option: a sort of amiable nothingness.
And yet, one must admit a grudging admiration. The British crossbench model has produced some notable figures: the occasional visionary, the occasional crank. It has allowed for a certain flexibility, a certain freedom from the whip. But flexibility in the service of what? If the goal is to avoid making anyone angry, then the crossbench is a masterpiece. If the goal is to save a civilisation, it is a travesty.
In the end, this new Australian party is a symptom, not a solution. It is a sign that the political class has run out of ideas. The old battles are exhausted. The new battles are too terrifying to engage. So they retreat into a safe, moderate, utterly forgettable middle ground. It is the politics of the sofa: comfortable, upholstered, and entirely motionless.
I shall watch this development with the same enthusiasm I reserve for watching paint dry. It will be competent. It will be inoffensive. It will achieve nothing.
