Is conservatism cool again? Well, not really, no.
But “something is happening out there,” according to Reform leader Nigel Farage.
Launching his election campaign last week, Farage hinted of a “new phenomenon” sweeping politics, and it’s being driven by an unlikely force: the young.
This weekend’s European elections proved him right. An insurgent National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen in France got roughly twice as many votes as Emmanuel Macron’s party, and the AFD in Germany surged to second place, knocking the left wing SDP to third place.
“We want to do away with the status quo, and that’s why many of my friends are voting for the right,” 25 year old Hungarian Bence Szabo told the BBC before the election.
“Everything coming from the right is being demonised, but we can actually solve the issues that the left tried to solve – and failed.”
It’s not just a continental phenomenon. Across the channel in England, young Brits are campaigning for the Conservative party to get ‘zero seats’ in their upcoming general election. And this isn’t the usual bunch of young radicals complaining that Tories are too right wing either, this time they’re complaining the Conservatives aren’t conservative enough.
Charlie Downes, 22, says that the Tories deserve ‘zero seats’ “for no other reason than sheer practicality for those of us who want to see genuine change.”
“The Conservative Party are in no way conservative. They give young people no reason to respect them, much less vote for them.”
Another young British student, Jack Anderton, 23, has also started a campaign calling for a cut in immigration, saying that the Tories have completely abandoned young people.
“If you’re a young conservative, you should really question whether you want to be associated with a system that has only produced failure and decline,” he told his massive online audience.
The young are loud, angry, and want radical reform – but will they get it?
In France, Jordan Bardella, an articulate 28 year old from a working-class region in Drancy, is considered the heir-apparent to Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally. In a live televised debate, while wearing an immaculate suit, he made his pledge: “I am the candidate of France which can no longer take its share of immigration… We want to regain control of our immigration policy.”
An Ifop poll in April showed that 32 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds said they’d vote for the National Rally, compared with 17 percent saying they’d vote for the left wing Unbowed. Clearly, he is doing something right.
In the US, Nate Hochman, Senior Adviser for campaign group America 2100, himself 25, says that young people are angry because “the world they were promised no longer exists.”
“Populism has a special appeal to today’s youth, for this reason and many others. For some, it’s a leftist populism — Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and so on. But for a growing number of young Westerners, the things they see and hear happening to their country are leading them rightwards.”
Will Australia see its own youth-drive ‘vibe shift’?
The Liberal Party has finally seen the writing on the wall on immigration and housing, and have been dragged kicking and screaming to talk about it. Videos on social media about immigration pick up over half a million views, outranking topics like nuclear energy. Last month, a Redbridge Group poll showed 53% of Australians aged 18-34 believed that immigration was making housing less affordable.
Still, multiple roadblocks stand in the way of serious immigration reform for the major parties. The problem isn’t so much democratic as it is demographic. Baby Boomers still rule the roost as a sheer voting bloc, and home-owning boomers who bought early are the ones who largely benefit from rising house prices.
Earlier in the year, independent economist Dr Cameron Murray asked a very important question on ABC’s Q+A: do we, as a nation, actually want lower house prices? Tellingly, no politician on the panel could answer it.
The mainstream parties are now stuck with contradicting mandates: give young people affordable housing, but also keep older voters wealthy with higher house prices. Cut immigration, but keep big business happy with heaps of immigration.
It’s as confusing as it is short-sighted.
How does one find a compromise with these groups? The short answer is, you can’t.
One side will have to get ignored, and so they’ll only get angrier and the fractures will deepen.
New conditions for an alternative political moment are rapidly emerging in Australia. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the name of the game is no longer about compromise, but conviction. Left wing journalists may decry the ‘Americanisation’ of our politics, but perhaps they should be more concerned about the ‘Europeanisation’ of it.
Smaller parties, representing increasingly siloed groups, are surely set to gain greater traction on the back of this political fracturing.
Not all overseas trends hit our shores, but the conditions here are ripe for a massive realignment. Nigel Farage was right, “something is happening,” and it might be global.
The vibe shift is coming.
Jordan Knight is a director of The National Conservative Institute of Australia
First published in The Daily Telegraph as “The kids are all right: Why Europe’s conservative youthquake is heading to Australia” on 11th June 2024.
