‘Woke is broke’ as a conservative tide travels around the Western world

It has become obvious to all but the most ideologically obdurate that a conservative tide is travelling around the western world. The US has caught the wave, as have Italy, Germany and Canada. European centrists are floundering in the face of centre-right and populist right-wing parties. British Labour is sinking in the polls and its prime minister, according to one columnist, is “almost the last socialist in a world shifting right-wards at breakneck speed.”

Until recently, no one predicted a Coalition election victory here this year, but the Liberal-National parties now have a decent chance of defeating a first-term government for the first time in nearly a century. The progressive moment in global politics is over, according to a recent Wall Street Journal headline.

You might argue that the shifting electoral mood reflects the natural pendulum of politics surging back and forth between mainstream parties and increasingly populist movements. The point here, though, is that political figures on the right are gaining power across the West by raising legitimate complaints about what Tory Lord David Frost calls “leftist, statist post-modernist madness.”

For more than a decade, progressives shaped Western public discourse and institutionalised a far-left agenda, with its guilt about Western cultural heritage, its obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion, and its penchant for cancelling unfashionable (conservative, classical liberal) opinions. As with all identity politics, the objective was to make the majority feel ashamed of itself.

At the same time, the left accused conservatives of waging a “culture war,” because of their temerity in objecting to the attempt by a self-appointed minority to overturn an established way of doing things. (In Australia’s case, for instance, flying the Aboriginal flag co-equally with the national flag or the ‘acknowledgement of country’ by all speakers at official events.)

In other words, it was acceptable for progressive elites to advance their agenda — not, incidentally, through the democratic process — but resisting their new demands and rules was deemed an act of aggression. A popular reckoning was coming.

The tide started to turn in October 2023 in (of all places) our part of the world. New Zealand voters kicked out a government and a cause adored by global progressives while Australians resoundingly rejected a referendum that would have added racial identity to the nation’s constitution.

A few months later, in March 2024, Ireland decisively rejected a proposal to change its constitution to remove what the activists claimed was “sexist” and “old-fashioned” language. (It was proposed that, among other things, the term marriage should be replaced with “durable relationships.”)

But it was Donald Trump’s victory 10 weeks ago that marked the important turning point; for his movement, as American journalist Bari Weiss says, represents “the crackup of the old consensus.” Leftist views about race and transgenderism formed a groupthink in many institutions, but they are now openly challenged and even mocked.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has joined Elon Musk’s X in renouncing censorship and (left-wing) fact checkers. A priority of the incoming Trump administration is to eradicate critical race theory. Even leading US left-liberal columnist Maureen Dowd says: “Woke is broke”.

Indeed, the public, not to mention shareholders, are fed up with corporates embracing progressive causes. Ask Nike, Gillette, Bud Light — or Woolworths, which last year banned selling merchandise celebrating our national holiday. This triggered a public outcry, culminating in the chief executive’s resignation and Woolworths’ volte face to sell Australia Day flags and thongs.

But it’s not just wokery that is in retreat. Voters across the Western world have soured on the results of progressive policies, such as lax borders, net-zero climate mitigation and fiscal stimulus.

In the wake of Covid, many governments believed the old joke about money growing on trees was actually true and legislated spending splurges and waves of regulation. This provoked what has become known internationally as a cost of living crisis — the worst inflation in decades, sky-high interest rates and reduced real wages.

Keynesian economists blame the rise of inflation on global supply-side disruptions after the pandemic and the surge of commodity prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But there is no question massive government stimulus added to inflationary demand, complicating the ability central banks to control inflation. It was one of the most alarming examples of international groupthink seen in the modern world.

Americans aren’t the only people who think they are worse off today than they were four years earlier. Europeans have also experienced sluggish growth, stagnant real wages and deteriorating living standards.

At this year’s federal election campaign, Peter Dutton will try to mirror the winning strategy of the Trump campaign by tapping into widespread anxieties that Australians have gone backwards in the Albanese era.

The asset-rich may have seen values soar, but the asset-poor are priced out of the market. All this is a reminder that inflation has been the Achilles’ heel of centre-left governments.

Making matters worse has been an ideological pursuit of a net zero decarbonisation agenda. Despite the failure of UN climate confabs to reach a legally-binding global deal to reduce emissions, Western governments have marched in lockstep to slash their nations’ carbon footprints even as China, India and other developing countries chug along the smoky path to prosperity.

But the promise of reliable and affordable renewable energy is as distant as ever. As a result of job losses and expensive net-zero subsidies, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration in Germany has collapsed. Thanks to its accelerating energy transition, resource-rich Australia faces the prospect of blackouts this summer as energy prices rocket.

In the Trump era, political support for net zero is likely to collapse. The incoming president will reverse Joe Biden’s green subsidies and regulatory acts against fossil fuels. Big corporations will join a broader Wall Street exodus from climate initiatives. Other nations will probably abandon their emissions targets as the costs become clearer to voters. All the while, global oil, gas and coal demand will rise.

This moment hardly represents the second coming of Reagan and Thatcher: the new conservatives hold paternalistic views on economics.

Nor are voters panting for moral crusades: they want competent governments that promote national identity, national sovereignty, energy realism, and a sound economy — in short, securing the foundations of a free society.

But although the new conservatives are in the ascendancy, danger lurks. Progressive ideologues, especially at schools, universities, public broadcasters and human-resources departments, won’t give up woke pieties without a fight.

Many leaders of today’s right have personal styles that could prove to be far better-suited to campaigning than government.  Some also propose simplistic solutions to complicated problems.

For instance, Trump argues that because free trade has apparently ravaged Middle America, US industry must be protected. But technological change is primarily responsible for the dislocation of workers, and higher tariffs will just raise prices for the very voters now part of the Republican Party’s populist, blue-collar coalition.

Too many conservatives today are reluctant to even talk about growth — let alone how to achieve it. They seem to prefer spending tax dollars to cutting taxes to bring growth that would provide prosperity, especially for the young and asset poor.

Still, one can disagree with some of Trump’s policies and wince at his cockiness and grandstanding self-importance, and still recognise that a new conservative movement is emerging across the West. With the left dominating much of the media, many journalists are oblivious to this wave, and it is difficult to get the straight story when electorates reject the ruling elite’s agendas. But the backlash against progressive politics is all too real, and it represents a victory for common sense over ideology.

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies.