Love the one you’re with

Many people will have never heard of Stephen Stills and his 1970 hit “Love the One You’re With.” The song – covered by great artists like David Crosby and Aretha Franklin – is most 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 hopefully provide some guidance after their recent leadership spill.

Stability in the world of government is a rare beast. Politics is a messy game in an everchanging world, full of momentum, shooting forward to meet the demands of the powerbrokers and powerful. In other words, as the old saying goes, it’s probably best not to see how the sausage is made.

With Sussan Ley’s removal by 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 but 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 the two-party-preferred methodology, the 2028 Federal election would see, remarkably, a Labor-One Nation contest. While it’s too early to get carried away – two years is a long time in politics – we are certainly in unprecedented times.

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

By design, the Australian system is expected to be more mundane. While there are loud voices on either ends of the political spectrum, the majority of 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. 

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

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

Difficult political lessons are hard to learn and easy to forget. The rebuilding process after an election loss can be painful, long and take a number of attempts to get it right. “Getting it right” has an obvious path: you offer hope, credibility and a policy alternative to voters. “Getting it right” does not always mean a different leader.

We have been here before but we’re also in uncharted territory. 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: they are squeezed from the centre by Labor and from the right by One Nation. Instead of rebuilding their party from the ground up through policy and credibility, they have succumbed to acrimonious bloodletting and score-settling.

In contrast, the Labor Party under 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 of the right. In these circumstances, Labor can stay trained on its agenda, facing limited parliamentary resistance and moving 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 direction from fracture to force.