A couple of days ago, Greg Sheridan had a piece in The Australian in which he argued:

‘Covid has been diabolical for centre-right governments around the world. They handled Covid generally no better or worse than centre-left governments. But Covid hurt conservatives in two crippling ways.’

Sheridan then at length goes into how all the massive spending crippled the reputation of conservative governments (or supposedly conservative ones) because it gutted one of their main selling points: that they were more fiscally careful, more thrifty, and more likely to deliver a balanced budget than the left-of-centre crowd.