In the current issue of the European Conservative, Edwin Dyga talks about the failure of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott to achieve lasting conservative change while in office despite some promising moves.

The article is on page 12 of the linked print edition.

Conservative politicians, if they are to distinguish themselves from ideological progressivism, must understand that they are fighting a cultural guerrilla war — one in which responding with gentlemanly virtues to outright bastardry will be seen as a sign of weakness and treated accordingly; one in which an attitude of ‘fair play’ in the face of Alinskyite agitation will inevitably lead to defeat; one in which alleged opposition to the left must be proven by a fundamental repudiation of the opponent’s worldview; one in which militant calls for apology when that worldview is offended should be laughed at, not accommodated; one in which explicitly rightist reforms and tangible moves to dismantle institutionally entrenched leftist ideology should be pursued aggressively and without compunction; and one in which the core electoral base should never be treated with contempt, even when strategic compromises need to be made to effectively implement reforms.

Failure to understand this will reduce conservative politics to the preservation of the left-liberal status quo, and render conservative politicians little more than seat warmers for those sitting opposite and fundraisers for their programmes. Likewise, conservative voters’ failure to keep their ‘representatives’ accountable has—and will continue—to produce Thomas Carlyle’s ‘phantasm captains’ instead of the leaders we expect.

Indeed, until we make it clear that our votes need to be earned, conservatives will deserve the leadership that they routinely and blindly reward.

While men of the left may recognise similar pathologies of unprincipled opportunism infecting their political culture, the underlying liberal assumptions across the political spectrum renders them, and not conservatives, more capable of ideological advance by default. The status quo is always progressive. Swimming against the current, men of the right must recognise that a lack of militancy will serve only to reinforce this leftward drift. It is not enough to simply declare this protest as political naïveté on the part of disenfranchised traditionalists who do not understand the need for compromise. The brutal and too often ignored fact is this: resigning to and working within a paradigm that systematically favours a left-liberal order defeats the very reason why one would be involved in centre-right politics to begin with.

Those who do not understand this have no business being in politics, and should certainly not expect the support of conviction conservatives at the ballot box. Perhaps the only option left to the largely disenfranchised romantics of the right is to refuse to participate in the present mediocrity, hoping (perhaps vainly) that our votes may be courted by politicians of greater fortitude, who actually value those votes, in the future. The alternative is to continue down the same path of incremental defeat: an unsustainable and therefore unacceptable option for those who reflect on the present political wasteland with growing and bitter revulsion.