Forget the wacky theories, the Liberal Party lost because it trashed its own brand
When the prosperous residents of an electorate like Brighton suddenly vote for anyone but the Liberals in such numbers that for a long moment it appeared a 19-year-old Labor candidate who had spent $1750 on his campaign might become the local member, you can be pretty sure that something has gone seriously tits up.
Forget a lot of the agonised tripe that has been written and said about the reasons for the Liberal Party’s near-death experience at the weekend.
Premier Daniel Andrews said he's pleased Victoria rejected "the negativity, the fear, the spite and that small brand of nasty politics."
Conservative commentators were drowning in alternative realities: Miranda Devine thought it was because Matthew Guy didn’t tackle Safe Schools; Peta Credlin opined, weirdly, that the latest Bourke Street attack had made it hard for the Liberals to campaign on law and order. Sydney’s Alan Jones topped them all by claiming Guy would have done better if he’d had the “courage” to spend time on Sky TV.
Hogwash. It’s a lot simpler than all that.
Feuding Liberals show zero interest in learning lesson of Andrews win
The Liberal Party has trashed its own brand.
And it’s far from limited to Victorian state issues, despite the shambles of a campaign led by the unconvincing Guy whose slogan, “Get Back in Control” gave the game away from the very start.
Premier Daniel Andrews, of course, ran a campaign that showed he and his colleagues were actually in control and prepared to borrow and spend big to keep it that way.
Improved roads and rail, free school lunches, doggie vet subsidies, public IVF treatments and cheap solar panels might have won Labor the state election anyway.
But whatever Labor offered would never have been enough in even halfway conventional circumstances to tempt large numbers of affluent voters in places like Brighton or Hawthorn to abandon the Liberals in the way they did at the weekend.
Those voters, quite obviously, were rejecting a party they felt had rejected them, or at least their idea of what the Liberal Party was supposed to be.
The behaviour of what had been their party at federal level - the flirting with Tony Abbott’s choice of punisher, Peter Dutton, the overthrow of their idea of a leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and the choice of a chancer, Scott Morrison, as a replacement prime minister - had poisoned them.
And the poison had seeped all the way down.
It’s how you trash a brand. A batch of frozen berries is tainted in Beijing, causing customers in Melbourne to fall ill, and that brand of berries quickly finds itself with no buyers anywhere.
Andrews and his colleagues recognised this pretty simple equation.
That’s why they erected all those billboards featuring pictures of Matthew Guy surrounded by Dutton, Abbott and Morrison.
They were tainting Guy with federal poison, just to be sure.
And Liberal voters in every corner of Victoria were reminded, wherever they looked, that their old party, its current leaders near and far consumed by a search for some mythical base, had lost its bearings.
Should anyone be surprised that brand Liberal, poisoned from the top - just like brand Labor during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years - had found itself short of buyers at any price?
Of course not.
Those who’ve been watching have already seen the toxin have its way in September, when the Liberal Party lost a NSW state byelection in, of all places, Wagga Wagga, and in October, when the party couldn’t retain Turnbull’s previously unloseable seat of Wentworth.
When the prosperous residents of an electorate like Brighton suddenly vote for anyone but the Liberals in such numbers that for a long moment it appeared a 19-year-old Labor candidate who had spent $1750 on his campaign might become the local member, you can be pretty sure that something has gone seriously tits up.
Forget a lot of the agonised tripe that has been written and said about the reasons for the Liberal Party’s near-death experience at the weekend.
Premier Daniel Andrews said he's pleased Victoria rejected "the negativity, the fear, the spite and that small brand of nasty politics."
Conservative commentators were drowning in alternative realities: Miranda Devine thought it was because Matthew Guy didn’t tackle Safe Schools; Peta Credlin opined, weirdly, that the latest Bourke Street attack had made it hard for the Liberals to campaign on law and order. Sydney’s Alan Jones topped them all by claiming Guy would have done better if he’d had the “courage” to spend time on Sky TV.
Hogwash. It’s a lot simpler than all that.
Feuding Liberals show zero interest in learning lesson of Andrews win
The Liberal Party has trashed its own brand.
And it’s far from limited to Victorian state issues, despite the shambles of a campaign led by the unconvincing Guy whose slogan, “Get Back in Control” gave the game away from the very start.
Premier Daniel Andrews, of course, ran a campaign that showed he and his colleagues were actually in control and prepared to borrow and spend big to keep it that way.
Improved roads and rail, free school lunches, doggie vet subsidies, public IVF treatments and cheap solar panels might have won Labor the state election anyway.
But whatever Labor offered would never have been enough in even halfway conventional circumstances to tempt large numbers of affluent voters in places like Brighton or Hawthorn to abandon the Liberals in the way they did at the weekend.
Those voters, quite obviously, were rejecting a party they felt had rejected them, or at least their idea of what the Liberal Party was supposed to be.
The behaviour of what had been their party at federal level - the flirting with Tony Abbott’s choice of punisher, Peter Dutton, the overthrow of their idea of a leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and the choice of a chancer, Scott Morrison, as a replacement prime minister - had poisoned them.
And the poison had seeped all the way down.
It’s how you trash a brand. A batch of frozen berries is tainted in Beijing, causing customers in Melbourne to fall ill, and that brand of berries quickly finds itself with no buyers anywhere.
Andrews and his colleagues recognised this pretty simple equation.
That’s why they erected all those billboards featuring pictures of Matthew Guy surrounded by Dutton, Abbott and Morrison.
They were tainting Guy with federal poison, just to be sure.
And Liberal voters in every corner of Victoria were reminded, wherever they looked, that their old party, its current leaders near and far consumed by a search for some mythical base, had lost its bearings.
Should anyone be surprised that brand Liberal, poisoned from the top - just like brand Labor during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years - had found itself short of buyers at any price?
Of course not.
Those who’ve been watching have already seen the toxin have its way in September, when the Liberal Party lost a NSW state byelection in, of all places, Wagga Wagga, and in October, when the party couldn’t retain Turnbull’s previously unloseable seat of Wentworth.
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