This is not as much about Trump as it is about the failure of modern politics

It is the week for a surprise election result! Not necessarily in Australia, but in Canada where Poilievre’s Conservative party — who were once leading by a large margin in the polls — appear to have ultimately been beaten by their left wing opponents.

Do Canadians mythologise their election results like we do? You could bet a similar result in Australia would soon enter election lore as another ‘unloseable election’ that was lost.

The early consensus seems to be that Donald Trump cost Poilievre the election.

While there is no doubt truth in this idea, if this is the only thing Australians take from the election we risk oversimplifying a complex situation.

It is one thing to resent Trump’s absurd rhetoric about Canada joining the United States, and the equally ridiculous carry-on over some imagined Canadian passivity in respect to drug trafficking, but quite another to assume this creates a general and enduring hostility to everyone on the right.

In short, ‘orange man bad, vote progressive’ isn’t the killer message some think it is. There are longer term trends at play that need exploration.

In many respects, the Canadian result is better seen as another piece of a puzzle that connects Trump and populism more broadly to the failure of modern politics. This has significant consequences for Australia.

For years, the conventional wisdom on Trump was that his supporters take him seriously but not literally and his detractors took him literally but not seriously. It appears both these perspectives were mistaken.

It seems that the causality of that argument might be reversed: Trump takes what the public say they want seriously and literally — and to its ‘logical’ conclusion.

This is where the big problems have manifested.

Trade is the perfect example. Free trade has never been nearly as popular with the public as it has with economists. We’ve been able to muster support for it from time to time, but even now (and even in a country so utterly dependent on trade as Australia), protectionism still has its supporters.

Many people believe Australia needs to have a manufacturing base if we want to be a wealthy country. Many people think there are compelling arguments against free trade — nebulously labelled ‘national security’ or ‘food security’ or even ‘job security’ — that justify widespread exemptions and protection.

Many, in Australia and obviously in America, believe trade routinely destroys whole communities in ways they can’t recover from. Trade is therefore seen to be a double-edged sword: with significant downsides we must constantly be wary of.

These claims get made all the time in Australia. Rarely do politicians on any side point out that these arguments are historically, theoretically, and economically incorrect. Instead, they act as if these arguments are irrelevant.

You can’t really blame the voters; the arguments for trade are somewhat counter-intuitive, especially when you are encouraged to view the world as a zero-sum game.

Regardless, the failure to confront flawed thinking means that all voters see are mainstream politicians who are ‘all talk’ and who ‘never do what they say they will do once they get elected’.

This is exactly the same reason that minor parties have become so popular in Australia.

Trump’s tariff war is the Green’s rent control is the Trumpet of Patriots interest rate caps. People gravitate to these simple-sounding ideas because they boldly confront real problems, despite repeated experience showing these so-called solution won’t work.

Unfortunately for Trump and his populist backers, the consequences of their ruinous tariff war are rapidly becoming apparent to Americans. Australian minor parties have the advantage of not having to implement their policies and see the calamity that would unfold.

The problem for the major parties is that modern media has now exposed the inherent contradictions and unseriousness of modern politics. The public is sick of politicians who passionately adopt a position one week for politician advantage and then passionately advocate the opposite when the advantage shifts. They can watch the flip-flops in real time now.

Of course there are many other problems that are uniquely Trumpian. Trump’s mercurial nature makes it seem like he acts utterly at random. The cult of personality that dominates Republican politics requires otherwise sensible people to pretend Trump’s capriciousness is part of an unseen grand plan when it clearly isn’t.

But populism is not a Trump-specific aberration that can just be waited out. We see a growing trend to tribalism and hostility to ‘elites’ with Brexit, Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany and elsewhere. Not to mention the rise of extremist progressivism.

The Australian election campaign has just underlined that, to date, major parties in Australia have reacted exactly the wrong way to the rise of minor parties and the Trump-like movements across the western world.

Instead of confronting the movements that play heavily to people’s biases and promise simple, sweeping solutions to voters’ problems, the majors have shrunk in on themselves. They have become insular and timid. It is not clear what they stand for — if they stand for anything at all.

Donald Trump may well have cost the Canadian conservatives an electoral victory, and he may do the same to Dutton and the Coalition, or he may not. The pressure on the right from populism will remain, regardless.

This doesn’t mean the left should be complacent. What unworkable ‘solutions’ might Labor have to promise to implement if it finds itself in minority government? The Canadian Liberals had success opposing Trump but that doesn’t solve any of the problems they are wrestling with in Canada.

The simple reality is that major parties across the world need to start measuring their success or failure by more than just whether they won the last election.

They need to do some serious soul-searching and find a better reason for their existence than just to try and win elections.

Simon Cowan is Research Director at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Ethan Sahagun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons