In the short time they have been on this land, the white people, migrants all, have shown a taste for political tragedy.  Good solid prospects just go bad and fizzle out down here.  We have no national political hero, and the last generation has seen an uncomely parade of seriously flawed prime ministers.  (Two of them lost their own seats.)  The view to the rear is bleak, and there are few grounds for hope in the future.  A maudlin mediocrity, as ever, hangs over us.

The rise and fall of Sir Keir Starmer in England therefore looks eerily familiar to us.  He did his nation a profound service by making his party one that functioned well enough to get elected – when it had been unelectable, and as a result, England had been badly governed for too long.  (And that is just what the State of Victoria is suffering from now.)  But he has failed as Prime Minister and lost the confidence of his party.  He therefore had to go.

It is not easy to spell out the reasons for his failure.  We all make mistakes, but if you are looking for a Shakespearian flaw of character that leads to tragedy, you might settle for Cordelia in King Lear.  Her failing was her refusal to play the family game and, as we say, feed the chooks. 

Starmer was not flexible or negotiable enough.  (It would be going too far, and it would inflame the victims of caste, to suggest that he was too decent.)  He just looked out of place, and he was unable to connect with those who handed him the chalice.  So, he had to quit driving the bus, even if his exit was less painful and consequential than that of Cordelia.  (‘Out went the candle, and we were left darkling.’)

England, too, has had a sad parade of failed prime ministers.  One difference to us is that it has occurred there over a period of time characterized by one continuing source of friction and pain – the decision to leave Europe. 

But one thing we have in common with England is the breakdown of the Westminster System.  They have not degraded their civil service to the extent that we have, but they have had at least as much trouble in the foundation of the parliamentary democracy, which they invented – the two-party system.

In both England and Australia, people want to retain government intervention in their lives, but they do not want to have to pay for it.  There is not much squabble room there – hence our inherited flat rejection of ideology (unless you are paid to boost a loony tune on the fringe).

Traditionally, one party has faith in government and wants to encourage government intervention in their lives.  The other party has less faith in government and seeks to have people look after their own affairs. 

In both countries, the first group is often associated with people who might be called ‘workers,’ and those bodies that represent them, while the other tends to stand for the drivers of business, and those who are willing and able to acquire sufficient wealth to look after themselves – and God help any ideologue who threatens to interfere with carve-outs that they extracted from government in a different age. 

Just as people find it hard to get government to drop or reduce a tax, so government finds it hard to take back a benefit or exemption it has granted to those on whose goodwill they depend.  The result is irrational, but inevitable – in a democracy.  And we continue to spend more than we have earned the right to spend.  Tomorrow is another day.  That is another risk in a democracy – an inability to plan for the future.

As it happens, the pathways to political power are better defined in the party associated with labour, as are its tribal or historical roots.  But care must be taken in dealing with the industrial base, and if one of the Comrades has seen the inside of an elite school, it is not considered proper to mention that in polite company.

The result is a problem for those in politics who stand for the status quo, a problem that some in the press might call ‘existential’.  What does the party stand for?  What is its reason for being – its raison d’être?  Put to one side, if you can, what are called ‘identity politics.’  If you want to be part of a political party, you have to stand for something. 

One party in that position in Australia, the Liberal Party as it is here called, is struggling to find the answer.  It is dissolving before our eyes at both state and federal levels.  In my state, Victoria, the Labor government is as inept, unpopular and sackable as that of Liz Truss in England.  The result in each case came from a failure of the two-party system.  Members of the Liberal Party, that unhappy few, feel wedged between some very bright women on one flank, and a most dreadful specimen on the other.  (From this distance, the Tories look to face a similar quandary, and the successor to Sir Keir looks like the fixer from the party machine, so that the English can expect a return to business as usual in the back room.)

As it seems to me, the very unhappy position that people find themselves in both here and in England shows that our political engine has completely broken down.  We the people blame the politicians.  But when you look at the dreadful ratbags standing up on the fringes to profit from the winter of our discontent, and at the collapse of all decency, if not sanity, on all sides in the United States, then it is not enough just to blame those who happen to be in charge of the ship as it goes down. 

There is after all some truth in the truism that we get the government that we deserve.  Indeed, an ideologue would say that the basal premise of democracy – government of the people, by the people, for the people – requires no less.

So, I was moved as I watched the very dignified speech of Sir Keir Starmer live on English Sky.  When they wheel out the lectern at Number 10 Downing street now, it might remind some of the unveiling of the guillotine on the Place de la Concorde.  Neither of the Sky ladies in any way resembles Madame Defarge, but when they sadly reflected on the brutality of politics, they called to my mind the dreadful blood ‘sport’ that the President of the United States put on at the White House in the now defiled city of Washington.  How could anything decent come out of that ghastly mélange?

Still, it is no comfort that others are doing it worse or harder than us, and I have no idea what the answer may be.  I do not envy those who seek to find the answer for my grandchildren.  Do you know anyone who would want to use that route to gain entry to the Chairman’s Lounge?