In Canada the Conservative party opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, plays to win. By that I mean that he takes the fight to politicians on the left; he doesn’t take advice from 30-year-old, risk-averse, careerist advisers who – like former prime minister Morrison – seem not to believe in anything, certainly not in free speech, and seem to be completely poll- and focus-group driven. Nope. Poilievre gives every appearance of having core values and of having a willingness to fight for them. (‘Isn’t that why people go into politics?’, I ask facetiously.) Poilievre will take policy positions the inner-city elites despise. For instance, across the Anglosphere a clear preponderance of those of us to the right of centre are completely fed up with the public broadcaster. Australia’s may be the worst of all, as in its being the most one-sidedly and overtly left-leaning. It’s worse than Canada’s CBC and worse than Britain’s BBC. And trust me, that is saying something. Remember the British journalist who came here a few years back and said that, ‘The ABC makes the BBC look like Fox News’? Heck, our ABC for years hasn’t had a single, solitary conservative presenter or producer on any of its TV current affairs shows. Not one! They’ve been challenged about this for years and can’t point to one. Plus, the ABC was a complete disgrace in its coverage of the Voice referendum. Its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war makes me fume. The organisation patently doesn’t care. Let’s be blunt. We conservatives, through our taxes, are paying a huge chunk of money to an organisation that manifestly hates our views.

So what do the Libs do about this when they’re in office? Gee, well, John Howard at least appointed some actual conservatives to the ABC board but that did nothing. Nada. Zippo. Zero. Turnbull and Morrison didn’t even do that. Their appointments were woeful and not remotely conservative. Now compare that to Mr Poilievre. He has staked out a position where he is telling voters in Canada that he is going to slash the CBC budget massively, up to half will be taken away. Now that has gotten the attention of Canada’s public broadcaster. (And remember, Canada’s CBC started off less crushingly, astoundingly, partisanly skewed to the green-left political end of the spectrum than our ABC.) This, dear readers, is how you fight back against the capture of the core cultural institutions by the progressive wokesters of the left. You ignore the bleatings from the chardonnay-sipping constituencies that were the small handful which voted Yes in last year’s referendum and you actually aim to do things for your core voters.  Maybe you promise to privatise the ABC.  Or to make it a subscription-only service (so we can see just how many people really would buy its predictable offerings). Or, à la Monsieur Poilievre, you pledge to cut its budget in half. Just promise to do anything that shows you actually aren’t prepared to tolerate the incredible lack of balance and overt one-sidedness. To the contrary, unbelievably, Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg opted to increase the ABC’s budget. It’s almost as though they could not care less about the views of their core constituency. You know, as when Team Morrison signed up to net zero. And never managed once to criticise the performance of Dan Andrews during the Covid lockdowns.

Now move south from Canada and consider Mr Trump. He is certainly prepared to fight the battles that need fighting. Yes, yes, the line from many of the great and the good – including a fair few former politicians on the right side of politics – is something along the lines of ‘Well, Trump’s just not a fit and proper person for high office.’ My response is, why? Because he tries to stop the illegal immigrants who pour across the border? (And many estimates put the number at over eight million since President Biden took office, upwards of half not being from central America and including many from the Middle East, this being a myriad more than came in under Trump.) Or because Trump fought to nominate top judges who wouldn’t just make things up and who have delivered more than a few great decisions? (By contrast, the geniuses in our Liberal party appointed top High Court judges who brought you the Love decision – three of the four in the majority being George Brandis picks alone – and who unanimously over-ruled the two-decade-old Al-Kateb case, thereby forcing the release of some very dangerous people based on a doctrine nowhere identifiable in the words, or traceable to the intentions of the drafters and ratifiers, of our Constitution.)

Or maybe Trump is supposedly not suitable for the office of president because he actually cut taxes right away (not in some mythical future)? Or because he was in office when the US economy was booming and had never, ever been better for black Americans and for women? Oh, I know. Maybe it was because Trump was the first US president since before FDR not to involve America in a war under his watch? (But he’s scary with orange hair, right?) Or because he moved the embassy to Jerusalem? Or, could it be that he was prepared to fight back against the cultural vandals, the wokester purveyors of the toxic identity politics’ worldview? You can’t point to a Liberal party leader at any level in this country – Jacinta Price and, eventually during the Voice fight, Peter Dutton excepted – who are prepared to fight the culture wars on any front. Heck, Victoria’s John Pesutto is fighting for the other side in these battles.

Against all that it’s true that Trump is crass and boorish. He puts ketchup on his food! I will give you that Trump was far less good in standing up to the lockdown authoritarian thugs than Ron De Santis. But he was far better even on that front than Boris Johnson and he was in a different galaxy to the shameful Scott Morrison. And don’t tell me Trump led an insurrection. That is patently false as shown by the lack of any legal insurrection charges. He contested the results in the same way all sorts of Democrat politicians have done over the years and, in my view, with more cause to do so. But not a single January 6th rioter was armed. You can’t run an insurrection without weapons. Yes, put rioters in jail but include all the Black Lives Matter ones too! Meanwhile every weaponised use of the criminal justice system against the country’s main opposition candidate just strengthens Trump in the polls, as it should.

At any rate, if the polls are to be believed a majority of Americans agree with me. They think the current times demand a fighter and that Trump is more than suitable. It’s not easy taking on all the elite institutions – think of which ones came out publicly for Yes last year, the big corporations, the charities, the sporting codes, the universities, the churches, the list goes on – but it can be done. We saw that last year. Alas, we’re craving for fighters on our side of politics. And so far we aren’t really seeing it from Liberal party politicians (save for small doses from Mr Dutton). Show some fight and you’ll romp to victory! If that means you have to fire those 30-year-old advisers, that’s just an added bonus.