I normally do not cover the news of the day, which cannot be understood without a frame of reference rooted in centuries past and looking forward to centuries to come. Other people cover it, it gets far too much coverage.
But this is as big, and perhaps bigger, than Trump coming down the escalator.
Trump’s Maga strategy in the US, One Nation’s strategy in Australia, and Farage’s Reform Britain strategy in Britain, was to deviate from the Uniparty far enough to clearly differentiate from the uniparty, but no more than that, and stay as buddy and connected to establishment, with as many establishment retreads in the party and administrative political apparatus as possible. Which, as we saw and continue to see in the Trump administrations, is a big problem, for personnel is policy, and his policy is in practice, depressingly uniparty. Look how long it took him to fire Pam Bondi and how long he defended her against Maga.
But in the British council elections, we had our first direct competition between the Trump strategy, and the no kidding full break with Uniparty strategy. And Restore Britain wiped the floor with Reform Britain. Reform has been wiped out in Greater Yarmouth, Restore’s test run, by the party well to its right. The same will happen in national British election.
Everyone has been trying to position themselves midpoint between Trump and Uniparty, while Trump himself has been trying to deviate as little as possible from Uniparty while still retaining Maga brand identity, so the right in politics is being nibbled to death by people compromising, and people then compromising on those compromises, and then compromising some more, while the Uniparty cheerfully continues to boldly to sail ever lefter, ever faster.
Uniparty is dying in Britain and Australia, because no one can tell the difference between one fake contender and another any more as the entire political establishment sails ever further left. The whole Uniparty project is falling apart.
The Uniparty policy, starting in the 1850s, was to introduce democracy, but knacker it through control of the mass media to create a fake conflict between one branch of the Uniparty and another branch, what is called Kayfabe in professional wrestling, and focus the public’s attention on that fake conflict. A faceless group of bureaucrats held power in the shadows, and hired a bunch of performers to distract public attention from anything that actually mattered. No matter which party won, the outcome was scarcely different. Democracy never worked, and it is not going to work. It is the method of obfuscating this that has failed. We had a Republic before it became democratic, but once the form of democracy was introduced, actual democracy would have delivered unacceptable results.
But now elections are turning into Uniparty versus everyone else, the blue haired crazies on their left, and the actual opposition on the uniparty right.
That Trump was allowed to be elected indicates a mutiny by the tech oligarchs. The issue that is really burning them up is that capitalism is being replaced by system that redistributes wealth away from actual businesses and ordinary people to quasi state businesses, such as the banks, the finance industry, the insurance industry, the medical industrial complex, and the rest, that lives on the revolving door between regulators and regulated. The British and European economies, and to a lesser extent the Australian economy, are collapsing because the uniparty came to view that it did not want any actual businessmen around, and the American economy has had grossly falling living standards for many years for the same reason. Which has pissed off a whole lot of very talented and wealthy individuals who are able to do something about it.
If you take the kayfabe political conflict seriously, which I never have, it is very odd that no one except Lowe has tried the Trump strategy without cozying up to the ever less popular uniparty. Lots of people in the US and the world are trying to be Trump, but a bit less Trumpian, even though he revealed a vacuum that he has not been attempting to fill. Lowes’s strategy is to play the country gentleman, which is less threatening that Trump’s bombastic showman persona, while pursuing political policies and personnel selection policies that distance himself from the Uniparty far more radically. What is really upsetting the Uniparty is his personnel selection, for personnel is policy. The Uniparrty prefers to rule from the shadows, by having the right people in place.
In response to this threat, the Uniparty has come out with a new definition democracy. Democracy now means limits on the power of the merely elected politicians in favor of the permanent bureaucracy. Which they might get away with the permanent bureaucracy was merely a parasite trying to keep its host alive, but is unlikely to work all that well when the parasite seeks to destroy the host.
There’s a second element to Lowe that’s worthy of note.
One of the consistent features of the fake uniparties is that they are national. This seems trivial, but it’s an important feature because it allows them to define the center around which conflicts revolve as the uniparty’s home base. For instance: Reform UK is still a Westminster party, hence committed to playing on Deep State terrain. In the USA, the GOP is a Washington DC Party. Defining the fulcrum gets you 50%+ of the way toward the Uniparty.
Lowe is starting as something else. Restore Britain is beginning as a REGIONAL party. Thus ensuring that the center of its efforts is defined away from the Uniparty’s home base. That is at least as significant as the personnel choices, if maintained.
In Canada, the Reform Party did much the same thing around Western Canada, while competing on a national stage. So, too, does the Bloc Quebecois. The Reform Party eventually killed the incumbent Progressive Conservative Party, then became the senior partner in the current Conservative Party of Canada. It got them elected a couple of times, but the CPC promptly fell again to Laurentian Uniparty capture. I don’t think that was a coincidence.