Labor has stormed to victory in the federal election and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will lead a majority government following a disastrous night for the Coalition and Peter Dutton.
At 8.24pm, less than half an hour after the final polls closed in Western Australia, 9News projected Labor had won the election.
Are these guys Labour like the UK’s Labour (basically a centre-right wing party in disguise these days), or are they legitimately a left-wing pro socialist workers rights party, like Labour should be?
If the latter, good for them! They deserve good things over there.
It depends who you ask.
In practice, the former.
I want to believe some Labor politicians are the latter, but afraid to show it because it’s punished the party politically in the past. There are definitely right and left factions within the party, it’s just not clear what the balance is.
It used to be closer to the former, the rise of The Greens as a third force in Australian politics has been a result of the right faction of the Labor party pushing them away from some of those roots as it desperately tried to win elections. Many Greens voters are former voters from the Labor left. With Labor’s main opponents in complete disarray, however, there is potentially a greater possibility for it to shift left over the next term (and longer, depending on how quickly their opposition regroups).
Yep, very similar to UK Labour, in my understanding. They’ve distanced themselves from their union roots a lot over the last 4ish decades.