Opinion - Conservative losses in Australia and Canada have shocking parallels

Yahoo

05-05-2025

The last few weeks brought two extraordinary political events in the Anglosphere: federal elections in Canada and Australia in which entrenched liberal incumbents survived against the odds, surging populist right-wing opposition parties fell short and, in a striking symmetry, both opposition leaders lost their own parliamentary seats.
At first glance, these results might seem like isolated national stories. But dig deeper and a shared narrative emerges — one that reveals how the 'Trump effect,' once a galvanizing force, is beginning to falter abroad. Nowhere is that clearer than in the way defense policy factored into these elections: visible, yet incoherent on the populist right; present, yet perfunctory from the incumbents.
In Australia, Peter Dutton led the center-right Liberal-National Coalition into the federal election with a campaign laser-focused on crime, immigration and cost-of-living pressures. It was the kind of scorched-earth populism that echoed Trump's rhetorical playbook: blunt, combative and heavy on culture war themes.
But it didn't land. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor government — despite middling economic performance and mounting criticism over energy and housing policy — held on to power. Dutton not only failed to unseat the government but lost his own Brisbane-area seat of Dickson, a working-class suburban district that had been trending away from the right for years.
Even on defense, where Dutton might have claimed credibility as a former defense minister, his party failed to articulate a compelling vision that moved beyond vague promises of spending increases and into the realm of strategic foresight, especially in the face of a rising China and a more volatile Indo-Pacific.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Pierre Poilievre suffered a nearly identical fate. The Conservative leader had campaigned with populist swagger, stoking public anger over inflation, carbon taxes and government overreach. He weaponized frustration with Justin Trudeau's long tenure, and for a while the polls seemed to tilt his way.
But as the campaign wore on, Poilievre's angry edge alienated moderate voters. The Liberals — led by an uncharismatic but disciplined Mark Carney — squeaked out a minority government. Poilievre not only failed to win the country but lost his own seat in Carleton, Ontario.
And while defense wasn't the defining issue of the campaign, it mattered. The Liberals made just enough noise about meeting NATO commitments and modernizing NORAD to appear credible, while Poilievre fumbled the file — caught between promising fiscal restraint and the need to re-arm. He said the right things about submarines and the Arctic, but offered no pathway to implementation. Voters noticed.
That two opposition leaders could fall in such spectacular fashion in such similar democracies, and at nearly the same moment, is more than coincidence. It's a symptom of a broader pathology — and a warning sign for conservatives everywhere. The short version is this: The Trump effect is running out of gas abroad, even as it regains traction at home.
Neither Dutton nor Poilievre is a carbon copy of Trump. But both tried to ride the same wave that swept the American right to power in 2016 and 2024. Each ran campaigns premised on rage: at elites, at rising prices, at immigration and identity politics. They courted conspiracy-adjacent voters while offering little in the way of serious economic or national security policy. They performed well on social media, but confused virality with victory.
The real problem wasn't style, though that surely hurt them. It was strategic substance — or the lack of it. In Australia, Dutton never developed a coherent vision for national security, climate or energy. His party leaned on platitudes about military modernization and AUKUS without grappling with what that would mean in budgetary or strategic terms.
In Canada, Poilievre railed against carbon taxes and central bankers but had no credible defense platform to anchor his talk of sovereignty. His promises to rebuild the armed forces and invest in Arctic defense lacked follow-through. He had no clear answer to the question of how Canada would meet its NATO and NORAD obligations under his leadership — or how to square that with his anti-government crusade. In both countries, the populist right mistook indignation for strategy and paid the price.
At the same time, these defeats were not a rebuke of conservatism. In Canada, the Liberals were returned with fewer seats and a much weaker mandate and will need support from a decimated New Democratic Party. Carney's victory was narrow, conditional and likely unstable.
In Australia, Labor's majority shrank, and Albanese is now vulnerable to pressures from the Greens and independents. The populist opposition didn't win, but the centrist establishment is hardly secure. What we're witnessing isn't a leftward lurch — it's a crisis of political coherence.
In both Canada and Australia, center-right parties tried to borrow Trumpist aesthetics without understanding its American context. Trump's brand of grievance politics works (when it does) because it's rooted in a specific set of American cultural fault lines that don't transplant easily. In Australia and Canada, the political right imported the style but forgot the soil. The result was electoral collapse.
So what lessons should conservatives draw from all this?
First, populism without discipline is a dead end. Outrage can fuel a movement, but it doesn't govern — and in multiparty democracies like Canada and Australia, it doesn't even win elections.
Second, opposition parties need serious, hardheaded policy platforms. Voters want answers, not just attitude. That means clear, actionable defense policies — not just gestures.
Third, the politics of the Anglosphere are converging in strange and sometimes contradictory ways. Trump's influence is felt everywhere — but it mutates in transit. What works in Mar-a-Lago often fails in Mississauga or Melbourne.
The defeats of Poilievre and Dutton are strategic lessons about the limits of mimicry and the dangers of mistaking performative populism for power. They show us that political realignments are messy, nonlinear affairs — and that the American right's path is not necessarily a roadmap for its cousins abroad.
But they also show us that all is not well with the liberal order. Both Australia and Canada emerged from their elections more fractured than before, with weaker governments and stronger undercurrents of discontent. The populist right may have lost the battles, but the war is far from over.
The Trump factor still haunts the politics of the English-speaking world. But what we're seeing now is not a triumph — it's a test. A test of whether conservatism can evolve beyond Trumpism without collapsing into irrelevance; whether liberal democracies can offer more than just managerial continuity in a world demanding strategic courage; and whether voters, fatigued by theatrics and fear, are ready to reward seriousness again.
The jury is still out. But if Poilievre and Dutton are any indication, the path forward will require more than slogans but what neither man could offer: substance, humility and a willingness to articulate defense and foreign policy in terms voters can respect.
That might not go viral — but it might just win.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington.
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