It seems there is something of a sea-change in politics in the Anglo-sphere and ancillary nations.
We saw in the recent British votes, the absolute massacre of Labor in previous strong Labor precincts with workers deserting them for the conservatives.
Likewise in the US large sections of the blue collar working class deserted the Democrats for Trump's Republicans.

Meanwhile, the middle and upper middle classes gravitate away from the more right-leaning parties and toward the so-called progressives.

Most of the old working class parties (Labor in the UK, ALP here, The Democrats in the US) have been taken over by the white collar urban elite whose aims and aspirations are very different and often in opposition to that of the old working class. This is best illustrated here with the issue of Adani, where the ALP struggled and still struggles to straddle the fence between the views of the inner city green elites who oppose any mining as against the views and aspirations of a blue collar class that needs the jobs that mining brings.

A similar thing seems to be happening in France where the workers appear to be abandoning Macron in favour of le Pen's conservative group.

It can't be yet said with certainty that the conservative parties are now the party of the blue collar working class, but the the weekend results are consistent with that outcome.

It was always going to be well near impossible for the ALP to have both the mining/agricultural workers and the inner city green white-collar classes in the same tent. It seems that the impossibility of that alliance is now becoming plain. This is what Joel Fitzgibbon has been trying to tell the party for a while now...."The Labor Party has to speak more about jobs and jobs security as it does about climate change,". But they can't because, for most of the current leadership, things like climate change matter more than jobs.

May you live in interesting times.

mhaze,

The Hunter Valley is a working man's constituency far from inner-city pedogreen territory.

SM,

Yes, that was my point.

Paul

Sour grapes

Issy,

Can you explain the halving of the Shooters, Hooters and Fools Party vote? People wont buy that "guns for all" single policy. They have no policies to cover things like health or education, transport, nothing at all.

Indy

The NSW Labor Party is still a basket case, so no sour grapes from me, I expected the Nationals to retain the seat, given ScumO' $600 million of pork barrelling just before the vote. You never commented on your parties total failure at the Tasmanian State election, didn't even come close. The Greens won two seats.