‘This is what conservatives have to recognise,’ proclaimed former UK prime minister Liz Truss at the Tory party conference in Birmingham last week. ‘We are no longer the party of the Establishment.’ Ms Truss made a compelling case in an interview with the UK Telegraph’s Tim Stanley that real power in the West has shifted from our elected politicians to the entrenched and unelected elites who run the myriad institutions and bureaucracies who press on with their own agendas regardless of which party wins at the ballot box. Apart from the banks and financial institutions that terminated her prime ministership in record time, she also has little time for ‘the Climate Change Committee, the Migration Advisory Committee’ and the many other bodies that governments ‘outsource’ their decision-making to. It is a bleak and somewhat scary contention – Yes, Prime Minister on woke steroids –  but one we can certainly relate to here in Australia, too.

The public, Ms Truss insists, are fed up with the status quo and desperately seek a change in the way governments operate: a disgruntled British electorate long for a return to the better times of the Eighties and Nineties and in particular a change to immigration, a change to law and order, a change to energy policy and above all a change to the all-encompassing, woke ‘culture’. She believes that unless conservatives accept this challenge, to change the way politics works by kicking out the entrenched, left-leaning Establishment, they are doomed. She also, correctly, recognises that this is the public mood that Nigel Farage and his Reform movement will happily reap the benefits of if the conservatives continue to vacate the field.

In America, Donald Trump has long been on the same mission, which he calls ‘draining the swamp’. Indeed, it is not surprising that Ms Truss is a fan of Mr Trump and views a Trump victory in November as ‘the first domino falling’ in what she, in the title of her new book, has identified as Ten Years to Save the West. ‘The Davos, Word Economic Forum elites do not like Donald Trump… and I take that as a good sign,’ she quipped to her interviewer, who after admitting that he ‘quite liked’ Mr Trump, pointed out that many Tories find him ‘weird’. ‘Is there a risk we are hitching our wagon to the wrong star?’ Mr Stanley then asked, suggesting, presumably, that support for the anti-woke Trump agenda was anathema to the modern Tory party.

There is, of course, a faddish medical condition known as TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome, which clearly afflicts conservatives both in the UK and Australia, and we see evidence of it on a daily basis in the so-called ‘conservative’  media.

The same battle for the soul of the conservative party that is now underway in the Tory party has of course been a long-running battle here in Australia, too. Where Theresa May betrayed the Tories with her soft, mushy Labour-lite approach, so too did the mercifully departed duo of Turnbull and Morrison betray conservatives here. We are fortunate, however, that in Australia under the leadership of Peter Dutton the Liberals have veered back into the right lane on most issues. His leadership on the Voice referendum was outstanding (if a tad belated) and his firm commitment to Israel over the past twelve months has shown a moral clarity head and shoulders above most of the rest of the world. The contrast with the appalling cowardice and moral myopia of Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese could not be starker.

Nothing is perfect, however, and for whatever reasons there is a degree of moral confusion within the Liberal party over the related issues of online restrictions and censorship. Sensibly (if again, a tad belatedly) the opposition have opposed Labor’s draconian Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. Yet, foolishly, various members of the party have suggested a Coalition government would introduce an ‘alternative’ version. The Liberal party website still insists a Coalition government will give the dreadful Acma bureaucrats ‘stronger enforcement and information-gathering powers’ to combat ‘misinformation and disinformation online’ and Mr Dutton continues to support the unacceptably Orwellian eSafety Commissioner. This all needs to change. And urgently. (It should not be so difficult for conservatives to clearly distinguish between free speech and sensible age restrictions for online content. Previous generations have managed to make the distinction. Just because today’s technology makes it harder doesn’t mean the moral principles that must be applied should be any less clear.)

Ms Truss is visiting Australia and speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane. If her message is that the Liberal party needs to choose conservative values over Labor-lite bedwetting, we pray the Libs are listening.