There’s one thing that we can unequivocally take from Trump’s shock US election win – the neoliberal elite consensus is in deep trouble.

Since the end of the cold war, mainstream centre-left and centre-right politics has been conducted on the basis of a few incontrovertible truths: international action and globalisation will lead to wealthier and more productive societies; free markets and open trade borders and lift people out of poverty; individual rights are sacrosanct and must be protected.

This neoliberal consensus has dominated global policymaking circles for a good 25 years. In Australia, our two major political parties have been on a unity ticket on trade, globalisation and individual freedoms since the Hawke/Keating economic reforms of 1986-87 were accepted and agreed to by the then Howard Liberal opposition.

In the UK, US and across the western world, the centre left and centre right grew ever closer in terms of basic economic policy and commitment to individual rights-based language. But as Europe has lurched from financial crisis to immigration crisis, the US economic recovery has been patchy, and faith in political and economic systems around the globe has collapsed, the consensus is under threat.

For many, 2016 will be remembered as the year everything fell apart. Besides the election of Trump, with all his attendant nationalist bluster and populist economic and trade pronouncements, Brexit has seen the UK turn its back on Europe on the back of economic and immigration concerns, and closer to home, the 2016 federal election culminated in the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.

The nationalist far right is emboldened, and the left is becoming more isolationist and less economically liberal in line with it. Politics, so long dominated by the relatively sensible centre, is creeping out towards its polarities once again.

In Australia, for the moment at least, the Liberal party is especially vulnerable to its deeply populist rightwing flank. Following the Trump victory, a parade of Australia’s biggest nationalists, including Pauline Hanson, George Christensen, Eric Abetz, and the smugly emboldened Tony Abbott, jumped in front of cameras and behind computer screens to declare that voters are sick of “elitist politics” and subsequently implied they speak with the voice of the average voter.

Turnbull’s prime ministership has never been free from the threat of the far right of his party. He has consistently taken the hardline conservative position to appease the Christensens and Abbotts: on immigration, asylum seekers, the Racial Discrimination Act, the environment, and on the marriage equality plebiscite, Turnbull has allowed the hardliners to override his natural, small-l liberal instincts.

The sensible centre of the Liberal party – the bit that cleaves to the neoliberal consensus and cares more about trade and low taxes and individual social freedoms – is quietly despondent. But if the Trump victory holds one lesson for them it’s that appeasement and ignorance of social attitudes will not work.

The neoliberal Republican elite sat by while Trump trashed their brand and appealed to Americans who feel they cannot participate and are not welcome in the global economy. They looked the other way when fear – of outsourcing, job losses, increasing immigration, minorities, and most fundamentally, of change – captured working class constituencies and swept Trump through the primaries and all the way to the presidency.

Class is a dirty word in politics, and especially in Australian politics, but our own neoliberal elite must recognise that a lot of working class Australians are also terrified of change.

The Liberal party has two choices: it can continue its appeasement of nationalism and fear, or it can make the neoliberal project inclusive enough to at least acknowledge the valid concerns of working class Australians. If the Liberal party believes, as I do, that trade and migration and individual freedom are the best ways to propel people out of poverty, they have a responsibility to explain how that will happen, and how they’ll look after the people who may be temporarily disadvantaged.

Across the centre left and the centre right, we’ve become complacent. For many of us, myself included, the neoliberal elite consensus works very well. We have globally connected jobs based on nebulous intellectual capital. We retreat to our comfortable circles with friends who share our views, and we dismiss those who don’t as backwards racists.

The neoliberal elite consensus isn’t dead yet. But unless it gets a lot less elite and a lot more inclusive, it soon will be.