CAMERON MILNER: UK’s Labour and Australia’s Labor win elections, but have no moral compass to govern

UK Labour, the Australian Labor Party and the US Democrats are all adrift with no voting bedrock, little brand equity left and a bare memory of why they came to exist representing unionists and working people.

These hollowed-out parties are ultra-vulnerable to scandals, especially those involving personal graft for leaders and ruling political elites shown to be rank hypocrites in the eyes of voters.

This weakness comes from campaigning on “shared values” alone and eschewing seeking policy mandates from voters.

These days it’s all about winning the election and making it up as you go in government. It’s style over substance.

The party campaigners have briefed out how values unite voters while policies divide. This in turn sees their campaigns awash with platitudes over policy plans.

This campaign trend has been driven by gutless campaign managers who prefer to research the colour of the leaders’ glasses frames over testing where the middle-income tax relief should taper.

Labour in the UK and Labor in Australia win elections, but have no moral compass or electoral mandate with which to then govern.

It’s why the discovery by the public of recently-elected Keir Starmer’s rapacious appetite for freebies like private boxes at Arsenal games, clothes, glasses, a penthouse rental and Tay Tay tickets has seen his personal approval numbers in absolute free fall.

His Government looks like a Labour version of the Boris Johnson shit show they campaigned to sack — perhaps even worse as Labor campaigned on being so much more morally righteous.

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the UK, announced a brutal budget, freeing up £80 billion by cutting assistance and raising taxes. None of this was put to the people just four short months ago at the UK general election. In fact, cuts and new taxes were unequivocally ruled out.

UK voters are shocked and appalled, their hopes for something better dashed by a Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber unity ticket of lies to get elected from both the Conservatives and Labour.

The campaign managers are globetrotting, selling “their” election win without understanding the transactional cost of further shredding the party’s core voters. To them winning is the aim, it’s never about the challenges of governing.

Not surprisingly, many of the UK ideas came from those involved in Anthony Albanese’s small target campaign, including ALP national secretary Paul Erickson and Labor-aligned Australian lobbyist outfit Anacta.

Their strategy is the purest form of rank populism driven by a philosophy of “I share your values assurances and I’m not the other guy”.

It’s a sure-fire recipe for moral decay within the party as displayed by the tone-deafness of Starmer pocketing at least £100,000 of personal benefits last year alone.

If he follows the antipodean PM, Albanese, Starmer could have a whole lifetime of grifting. A life replete with Qantas upgrades, tickets to grand finals and days at the Australian Open on the piss. A whole lifestyle funded on freebies for him and his family.

If you forget who elects you, the base you purport to represent, you lose your moral compass to the influence peddlers and corporates buying your favour — and often your silence — while turning a blind eye.

The “values only” campaigns are replete with platitudes and empty sugary slogans. Repeated lines like: “I’m from Struggle Street too”, “no new taxes” and “$275 off power bills” with no details or policy meat to back them up.

And when it all gets too hard to get voters to engage with the sound bites there’s the classic Left wedge or crass scare campaign. Nuclear is all about three-eyed fish like in the Simpsons. Women’s rights to abortion are under serious threat.

A Labor activist and former Anacta director recently authorised a pro-abortion leaflet that went to voters across Queensland with a coat hanger as the graphic with the words “we can never go back to this”. It’s vile, and disgusting and shows the level of moral depravity the Left is now stooping to as their “values campaigning” scrapes the very bottom of the sludge bucket of politics.

Labor got smashed by voters in Queensland, who saw straight through the scare campaign.

It was the second lowest primary vote ever for the ALP at a State level, yet they are all running around backslapping how they won seats they thought they would lose. But they still lost very badly.

Queenslander and chief Albanista Murray Watt now wants Labor to campaign on abortion at the next Federal election.

For these Labor campaigners, it’s all about image, the spin and the worst smear you dare put in print or in a meme.

I’m not naive to the fact the conservatives smear just as much or race bait over immigration. They are no better. The Libs have just as many blowhards, with negative slurs pumped up on steroids. Some have weaponised rape claims even as their own personal lives wouldn’t stand scrutiny.

Labor used to win elections on the strength of its ideals and its ideas. I’m proud that Bill Shorten had the courage of his predecessors like Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke and Rudd to take a policy platform to the people and prove you can have values and valuable ideas.

Sure it means not winning some elections, but that’s the price you pay for living on your feet rather than being permanently on your knees repaying favours to corporate courtiers.

That’s real Labor. It’s having the courage of conviction and a belief in something greater than yourself. Being elected as a Labor representative shouldn’t mean you’ve just boarded the gravy plane and have a free entry ticket to a lifetime smorgasbord of lobbyists’ gifts and corporate largesse.

Albanese was so fond of saying the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Well, he’s updated that for all Labor MPs to the standard you call up for, accept without question and grab with both hands is the standard you accept.

It’s little wonder his closest Albanista, mean girl Penny Wong, thought dropping $3.4 million on what the estate agent sold as a “gentleman’s villa” replete with a Rolls Royce in the photos, was the new Labor way and a just reward for bullying colleagues and backing in Hamas.

Ultimately though, voters have got to stop rewarding the smear and fear. Voters have to take the time in their very busy lives to question the latest Albanese platitude or well-parsed answer to a simple question.

Labor can and should be so much better. For the moment it’s a party in Albanese’s own image and the polls consistently say voters aren’t buying it.

Labor can continue to listen to the perks-before-policies Albanistas, or they can do something about it. No other Labor leader in history, bar Anna Bligh perhaps, has been allowed to remain Thelma at the wheel as the electoral cliff is so firmly in sight.

The election is now within months. Unless Labor’s caucus do what’s needed themselves, I suspect voters will happily play judge, jury and executioner.

The question for all Labor MPs is whether the leader who had a good sook about the “unfair” coverage of his life funded by freebies is really capable of leading a coherent campaign.

A campaign that could be all about Labor’s big plans for Australia or instead, like so much of this term of office, just all about Albo.

Cameron Milner is a former State Labor secretary for Queensland