Love the one you’re with

Many of you will know Stephen Stills’ 1970 hit ‘Love the One You’re With’. The song – covered by great artists like David Crosby and Aretha Franklin – is memorable for its great refrain “And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey / Love the one you’re with”. These lyrics should serve as a poignant reminder for the Liberal Party and provide some guidance after its recent leadership spill.

Stability is a rare beast in the world of government. Politics is a messy game in an everchanging world – full of momentum, shooting forward to meet the demands of the powerbrokers and the decision-makers. As the saying goes, it’s probably best not to see how the sausage is made.

With Sussan Ley’s leadership loss to Angus Taylor, Australians have been offered a naked glimpse into the Coalition’s internal fracturing. Moderates, the centre-right, the national right and the populist right are no longer coexisting; they’re openly contesting the direction of their party. Each faction is pressing its case, seeking to shape the Coalition’s future amid an increasingly volatile political climate.

Based on current polling, if we were to apply two-party-preferred methodology, the 2028 Federal Election would see, remarkably, a contest between Labor and One Nation. While it’s too early to get carried away – two years is a long time in politics – we’re certainly in volatile times.

No matter how accustomed we are to global political schisms, Australians are not strangers to leadership spills, to major party bust-ups that, in the end, offer little difference other than gender. Angus Taylor replacing Sussan Ley may be all the rage, but Gillard toppled Rudd in 2010 when it was clear he had lost the party mandate. 

It’s no trivial matter when the Federal Opposition splits twice and a leadership spill engulfs party politics. Yes, the Coalition is back together and yes, it’s a new chapter under Angus Taylor. Even so, the longer the Coalition focuses on polling rather than matters of the electorate, the more dissent and desperation will grow.

By design, the Australian system is expected to be more mundane. While there are loud voices at each end of the political spectrum, most Australians gravitate towards the centre-left or centre-right, and this has produced stability and reasonable outcomes for decades. It seems, however, this system has run its course. With divided electorates, complex issues less easily resolved, and voters drifting away from the major parties, a change is certainly coming and dissatisfaction will certainly follow. 

Difficult political lessons are hard to learn and easy to forget. The rebuilding process after an election loss can be painful, long and take several attempts. ‘Getting it right’ has an obvious path: Offer hope, credibility and a policy alternative to voters, but it doesn’t always mean a different leader.

When voters feel untethered from or ignored by the traditional parties, they tend to drift towards political alternatives. This new terrain presents a larger-than-life problem for the Federal Coalition: It is squeezed from the centre by Labor and from the right by One Nation. Instead of rebuilding from the ground up through policy and credibility, the Coalition has succumbed to acrimonious bloodletting and score-settling.

The real measure won’t be the polls; it will be the state election results leading into the next federal contest. While South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales will see their Labor-majority governments put to the test, it’s the Coalition who must learn to “love the one they’re with” to survive the threat of the One Nation tsunami.

In contrast, the Labor Party under Anthony Albanese presents as a largely unified force. Its task is comparatively simple: Avoid major missteps and watch as the Coalition and One Nation tear themselves apart over more extreme positions on the right. In these circumstances, Labor can stay trained on its agenda, face limited parliamentary resistance and move toward an election campaign already framed by the disarray of its challengers.

A party unified, intact and functional, is Federal Labor’s greatest strength. “Loving the one you’re with” is often the best recovery route from fracture to force.