The news from Down Under is that a gaggle of Australian moderates, tired of the tribal screeching between Labor and the Coalition, have launched a ‘centrist’ party. And in a stroke of comedic genius, they have cited Britain’s ‘stable two-party system’ as their model. One must admire the ambition, if not the historical literacy. To look at the current British political landscape—a Conservative Party lurching from crisis to crisis, a Labour Party that has abandoned its working-class roots for the gilded pews of Davos—and declare it a beacon of stability is like admiring the Titanic for its punctuality.
Let us be clear: Britain’s two-party system is not stable because it is wise. It is stable because it is ossified. It is the political equivalent of Victorian furniture: solid, heavy, and covered in dust. The Tories and Labour have spent decades perfecting the art of keeping real choices off the table. They are cartel parties, not competing ideologies. They squabble over the management of decline while the nation’s foundations crumble. Is this what Australia wants? A choice between a smug neoliberal and a slightly more apologetic neoliberal? If so, they have achieved their goal before even launching.
But the real irony is the timing. The Australian centrists trumpet Britain as a model at the very moment when British politics is fragmenting like a dropped Wedgwood vase. The Scottish Nationalists, the Reform Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens—the two-party duopoly is under assault from all sides. Voter turnout is dropping, trust is evaporating, and the only thing keeping the system alive is the First Past the Post electoral mechanism, which is less a democratic process and more a form of electoral taxidermy. It makes the thing look alive, but it has long since stopped breathing.
Australia, of course, has the more sensible option of preferential voting, which at least allows for a modicum of nuance. But the centrists want to emulate the British model? Why not emulate the Albanian model while you are at it? Or perhaps the political system of North Korea, which is also remarkably stable? The truth is that stability is not the same as health. A coma patient is stable. A mummy is stable. Britain’s two-party system is stable because it has been embalmed.
What Australia’s new centrists fail to grasp is that the desire for a ‘sensible centre’ is itself a symptom of intellectual decadence. It is the politics of the managerial class, who believe that all problems can be solved by competent administration and a bit of cross-party tea-drinking. But the great issues of our age—climate change, automation, demographic collapse, the rise of populism—are not amenable to technocratic fixes. They require bold, even radical, thinking. They require breaking the mould, not polishing it.
The Victorian era, which I often invoke, was not a time of stable two-party politics. It was a time of fierce ideological battles between Gladstonian Liberals and Disraelian Conservatives, each with distinct visions of nation and empire. They fought over the soul of Britain. Today’s parties fight over focus groups. The Australian centrists, in their earnest search for the middle ground, are not emulating the greatness of British politics. They are emulating its decline.
Let them launch their party. Let them absorb the disaffected. But do not mistake their emulation of British ‘stability’ for wisdom. It is a surrender to the very mediocrity that has hollowed out Western democracy. And if they succeed, Australia will have achieved the dubious honour of catching up to Britain’s decay. Well done. You have rejoined the empire.
