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Date: Sun, 10 May 2026 08:17:19 +1000Pauline Hanson's "One Nation" party has won a seat in the House Of Representatives. The newly elected MHR, David Farley proclaimed that it was "The end of the beginning" for One Nation |
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This exact same phrase was repeated a little later by his leader, Pauline Hanson. So if nothing else, it seems that Farley, in this respect, was "On message" in his victory speech, borrowed from one of the most consequential orators of the 20th century, at least as far as the English language goes:
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
-- Winston Churchill, 1942,
Pauline Hanson is no Winston Churchill. But she has shown us all how to echo a phrase from that famous orator and how to become an overnight sensation in just twenty-nine years. Because that is how long it took for her party to win a seat in the lower house. The only other two One Nation members to sit in the lower house did not win their seats as One Nation Candidates. With beginnings like that, who needs ends, or means? Hanson has put the major parties on notice, that she is "coming for them". Meanwhile in the mother country, where Churchill famously first said those words, the Reform party won control of 1,450 local council seats and looks as if it could establish itself as the major opposition party in Scotland and Wales. There are rumblings about the leadership of Keir Starmer ... A prime minister who was recently accused by the president of the USA of "being no Winston Churchill". There has even been some speculation that Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform party, and definitely "No Winston Churchill", could be a future prime minister. This does seem extraordinary because many of the economic woes Britain faces today stem from Brexit, which ironically, Farage and his fellow travellers instigated by playing a key role in swinging the referendum on Brexit, back in 2016, along with a little assistance from Russian oligarchs, bots, scammers and twitter trolls. So how does he do this? Farage has caused many of the economic problems and is now able to lay the blame at Starmer's feet ... And remarkably few media outlets are holding him to account for the role he played in Brexit.
But this strategy ... Break it and then blame the opposition ... Wasn't invented by Farage. You may have forgotten all of this ... After all Brexit was a long time ago ... A decade no less. And it was only the first cab off the rank. A month after the Brexit referendum, Nigel Farage flew across the Atlantic to attend a cocktail party in Jackson, to meet with a corpulent orange former reality TV show host who had managed to win the Republican nomination for president. And who would go on to an overwhelming victory ... Or at least, according to the candidate himself it was ... In fact the greatest win of all time! Although in fact, he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, he did manage to win the all important electoral college by 80 electoral votes, along with a little assistance from Russian oligarchs, bots, scammers and twitter trolls. The first foreign "politician" to meet with the president elect was Nigel Farage who flew to New York in November, 2016 to congratulate him at Trump Tower.
Since then Trump has become the self-proclaimed leader of global far right politics. He has maintained it throughout the ten years that succeeded his greatest win of all time, despite mismanaging the Covid-19 crisis, attempting to over-throw an election, being investigated for stealing classified documents, being found liable for fraud and sexual assault and other criminal behaviour ... These transgressions have been over-looked by his fawning fan-base who perceive him as a "business man" who entertains and captivates them by "trolling" the opposition, who he has referred to as the enemies within and/or enemies of the state, and accused them of enabling vermin from shit-hole countries to infiltrate the USA and poison the blood of the nation and similar utterances that if expressed by any other politician in a Western post-war democracy, would have brought a swift end to his or her political career. But nothing seemed to stick to "Teflon" Don. His enthusiastic followers high-fived, celebrated and hooted with laughter at how their "dear leader" could employ fascist and neo-nazi rhetoric with no consequences. They considered such rhetoric to be "anti-woke" ... And telling it like it really is.
During the Trump come-back, the Republican National Convention (RNC) in mid 2024 was a attended by some regular foreign political figures, who were hedging their bets by trying to set up connections in the event of a Trump victory. However at times the RNC became less like a normal political convention and more like a love-fest of right wing weirdos and extremists who gathered to stroke Trump's enormous thirsty ego. Although it might be possible to say that Boris Johnson, who attended and is also "no Winston Churchill", was just a regular politician, there is little doubt about which end of the weirdo spectrum Nigel Farage sat when he attended.
At the other, although certainly not opposite, pole of the right-wing Anglosphere, Pauline Hanson had been invited to attend the Trump inauguration in 2016, but declined and sent Senator Brian Burston as her representative. Although, compared to Farage, she has kept a lower profile when it comes to showing support for Trump she did fly, later during Trump 2.0, on Gina Rinehart's jet, to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago and to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in November 2025, and has since made it more obvious about her allegiances.
Then we had Trump 2.0. And the band-wagon rolled on, like a juggernaut crushing his opponents ... During the first thirteen months of his second term, he has maintained his standing as king of the extreme right. His Teflon cloak seemed impervious to any political damage, even though he was visibly disintegrating, mentally and physically before our eyes. Physically, he struggled to negotiate stairs or walk in a straight line. Mentally, he was unable to construct coherent sentences and stay on message. He fell asleep during meetings and often stayed up all night posting contradictory threats, falsehoods and weird AI-generated megalomaniacal memes on his social media platform. Sometimes he would break off from a discussion and meander off to gaze lovingly at the hole in the ground where he believed legions of grateful workers would soon congregate to construct a new golden ballroom to honour and to thank him for all the sterling work he has done to "fix" the economy for himself. Even though his eyes occasionally light up and sparkle with appreciation whenever he detected speech that resembled praise, they were otherwise disturbingly vacant or three quarters closed. And yet the Trump reality TV show continued. And exactly as he had instructed them, the drongos and dickheads he had appointed to his cabinet gathered round him and praised him lavishly in each televised meeting and, in his own mind at least, he finished each day as the centre of attention. Trump was invincible! The greatest leader of all time! He could do no wrong. He played with the "tariff-on", "tariff-off" buttons, siphoned off billions of dollars in crypto bribes, gifts, government contracts, dubious legal settlements, insider trading and multiple other schemes that demonstrated that his organisation was certainly competent at corruption and grift if nothing else.
Listen! Don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.
-- Basil Fawlty, "The Germans"
Then Trump tried messing around with the "war-on", "war-off" buttons. Possibly high on his own supply after persuading the incompetent sycophant he appointed as secretary of defence to murder fisherman and drug-runners in the Caribbean and to engineer the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, Trump authorised the US military to join Israel in a decapitation air-strike against Iran while they were negotiating with them. Fueled with a grandiose vision of his own genius and effectiveness he ignored or just refused to listen to advice about the potential of a stranglehold on global oil and related chemicals and possibly egged on by Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump started an ill fated war with Iran, confident that it would be just like a video-game and only last a few days. And in fact he initially boasted that it would all be over in "maybe a few days". A hundred days later, the effect of rising oil prices have finally dented Trump's seemingly invincible armour. He has discovered that no natter how frantically he presses it, the "war-off" button doesn't function like the other buttons he has fooled around with since he assumed office. The ratings for the Trump Reality TV Show have gone into a serious decline almost as steep as the decline that was triggered by his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis.
The decline in Trump's mental health is plain for all to see. He has oscillated between announcing victory and threatening the entire destruction of Iran, opening the Strait of Hormuz, closing the Strait of Hormuz, opening the Strait of Hormuz, threatening very dire consequences and announcing there is a deal and the deal is off and the Strait of Hormuz is closed again. All of these activities were neatly timed to coincide with the markets opening, and were accompanied with huge trades on the betting markets. It seems that they are still very competent at corruption and insider trading. But the old magic trick of "Look over here!" does not seem to be working like it used to. The 45% of the world's population that still live in a democracy are showing their displeasure with Trump's foolhardy and expensive adventure in the middle east. And some of them are expressing their ire at the ballot box. And this may soon include the 4% that live in the USA, some of whom still vote, despite the best efforts of the Republican party. Some pundits have speculated that Trump's popularity may not have reached bottom and that it will continue to decline as long as petrol, diesel and fertilizer prices stay high.
The most worrying aspect about Trump's mental decline which now seems to be as rapid as his decline in popularity, is the power he still wields as president. And most worrying of all is the fact that he still has the nuclear codes.
It's the economy, stupid ... It's the economy!
Bill Clinton 1992
Farage initially supported the war in Iran. True to form, he criticised the government for not joining in with Trump ... And then completely reversed his position and criticised them for not being explicit about how they would not give any assistance for the war effort. As ever, the media has allowed him to get away with this. Farage has managed to pass himself off as an average "bloke", who you might want to "have a pint with". And the media appear to have uncritically accepted this persona and present him as entertainment to lighten the otherwise sombre news in the sphere of real politics. Now that some are speculating that he could be a future PM, it should be time for some closer scrutiny of Mr. Farage.
Hanson did call on the Australian Labor party to support the war in Iran and criticised them for not assisting Trump with the war. To date she has not walked this criticism back. However if she doesn't do so soon, she may not find it as easy as her compatriots in the UK and the USA to engineer a reality TV show style rise to prominence. Although she has stated, like her fellow travellers that all our problems are due to Muslims, Asians, non-white and "woke" agitators, the problems are mostly economic and probably stem back to 2008. Support for extreme right parties has increased dramatically since the failure to respond adequately to the financial crisis of 2008. It was decided to address it by giving trillions of dollars to the people who caused the problem. And this has supercharged the rise in the asset values and done nothing to arrest the steady deterioration in the value of labour. This combined with the shift of manufacturing to China and the increase in wealth inequality have been major contributors to support for the extreme right. Generally speaking, in the USA, UK and Britain, this support seems to be sitting at about a quarter of eligible voters, which is a remarkable increase since the early noughties. In the USA where there is only two parties and party-allegiance is rusted on, and 40% of eligible voters do not vote, that is more than enough for a former reality TV host and twitter troll such as Trump to exploit division and build a cult following that spends all of their days and nights trying to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for narcissistic affirmation.
Farage, who attended a private school in England and worked as a commodities trader in London and recently accepted a five million pound donation from a crypto billionaire, may not find it as easy to continue with his hail-fellow-well-met, lets-have-a-pint bullshit persona, now that he is being considered as a possible future prime minister in a five party political system, and the media may, at long last, turn the spotlight on him.
Pauline Hanson will find it much more difficult to convince voters that she is just a plain speaking ex-Fish and chip shop owner as she flies around Australia on a jet donated to her by Gina Rinehart, addressing a multi-ethnic electorate who have shown that they will respond to so called "hip-pocket" issues in a Pavlovian fashion that would gladden the heart of any marxist (if they still existed). Thanks to mandatory voting, the three quarters of Australian voters who aren't fascoid-curious will show up at the polls in a general election and thanks also to the unique Austraslian preferential voting system, Hanson's support is unlikely to translate into a victory in a general election. Although we should not be too complacent.
The rise in One Nation's support, however, could spell the end of the second oldest political party in Australia. The state Liberal party recently directed preferences to One Nation in the March South Australian election. And then in the Farrer by-election the federal party directed preferences to One Nation, ahead of the independent candidate. Some pundits have pointed out that this was not consequential since voters committed to a party don't always follow how to vote cards. This may be true. However preferences send an important message to voters who are not committed to a specific party and who don't pay much attention to politics, except when there is an election. Many of these voters will accept all of the how to vote cards, study them briefly, and perhaps chat with other voters in the queue. And then when they are in the privacy of the booth, make up their minds about how they will vote. Quite a few of us, even the ones who take an interest in politics might admit to similar behaviour, even though we may have had a good idea of who we would end up voting for. John Howard realised this back in the days when there were far more committed voters. He made sure that One Nation was last on all coalition how to vote cards and combined this with the crafty approach of adopting some of their policies and crushing them at the ballot box. This plan worked and Hanson was ejected from her seat in Oxley after she formed the One Nation party. There may be some who revile Howard for his role in plumbing the darkest atavistic and xenophobic impulses of the Australian nature, in regard to the treatment of refugees, but in many respects he showed an astute political cunning in his "small target" contest with Keating and his commitment politics. And there certainly are conservatives in this country who remain grateful for the manner that John Howard took actions on some things he believed in when he: Decisively took action regarding firearms after Port Arthur in 1996; Stole One Nation's lunch money and beat them up at the polling booth in 1998; Sent Australian troops to prevent armed thugs from murdering unarmed citizens in East Timor in 1999; Was able to eviscerate the Republican movement in 1999 and ensure that Australia remained a constitutional monarchy.
Whatever else one might say about Angus Taylor, the current Leader of the Liberal Party, we can mostly agree that we often forget his name, that he deposed the first ever female leader of the party thus triggering the Farrer by-election and he that he is, without doubt "no John Howard" ... Or Winston Churchill. The diminishing belief in conservatism or anything for that matter, may have an inverse relationship to the proportional ascent of right wing populism and may be primarily a case of The economy, stupid, as James Carville is credited with supplying for Bill Clinton in 1992. Conservatives may now be pondering The end of the begining? Or is it, as Churchill also said, The beginning of the end?
We will find out in the next general election.