Canadá y Australia siguen a Reino Unido y reconocen el Estado palestino

Hablando de Australia, el otro día leí en Reddit estos tres comentarios muy interesantes sobre los laboristas australianos (el partido gobernante en Australia desde 2021 y que este mayo arrasó de forma absolutamente histórica con la victoria más abrumadora de la izquierda australiana desde los años cuarenta), que más que ser un partido político de centroizquierda son uno de centroizquierda/izquierda, estando formado por dos facciones que están básicamente completamente empatadas en cuanto al balance de fuerzas y de poder interno en el partido: el la Labor Right, que es de centroizquierda y tiene la socialdemocracia por ideología, y la Labor Left, que es de izquierda y tiene el socialismo democrático (no la socialdemocracia) de ideología, siendo esta segunda, la Labor Left, la facción a la que pertenece el actual Primer Ministro de Australia desde 2021, Anthony Albanese.

El primer comentario:

The party shifted to the right in the 90/early 2000s, but its current leader is from the left faction, and won a landslide election earlier this year, and unlike other centre left parties has continued to gain popularity since the election.

The greens are firmly the 3rd largest party in Australia, with 12% of the primary vote, and control the balance of power in the senate, however lost most of their house seats in this years election, although opposition house seats don’t really matter when the government has a big majority.

El segundo:

Albanese himself is from the left faction but constantly says he is governing from the centre, he is also positing himself and Labor as the party of reason, and not pushing for radical change so Labor becomes the new “Natural Party of Government” if this works it will allow labor to replace everyone in the government bureaucracy with those loyal to Labor, so the party can still influence government and national direction even after they have lost power, this is what the conservative Howard government did in 1994-2007

The agreement within the party is that a certain amount of ministers are from each faction, and right now the factions are pretty much even, with the senate being controlled by the left, and the house being controlled by the right.

The right faction is firmly social democratic and is controlled by the Unions, especially the SDA, they have historically been the true power within the party, the right used to be more third way neoliberal in the early 2000s, however their candidate Mark Latham lost in a landslide in 2004, then had a mental breakdown and joined the far right party, which massively damaged the right faction and forced them to go back to Social democracy.

The left faction is democratic socialist, however not as far left as mamdani, they get their power from the youth wing and party membership, they have only recently gained as much power as the right, however have had one of their senators defect and become an independent over gaza which damaged the faction internally.

In regards to Albanese’s messaging, Australia is a very centrist country, if you rock the boat with radical messaging you will be punished, as has been shown by the conservative coalition by their massive decline in 2021 and especially 2025 elections after the party leaned rightwards, our electoral system pushed parties to the centre.

EDIT: One thing I should mention is that Labor and the Greens have a very negative but mutually beneficial relationship with one another, this is because, unlike most countries where Left-wing parties fight and divide the vote, our Ranked choice voting system essentially makes all green voters Labor voters, which makes the greens functionally into another faction of the Labor party, with the official message of the greens being they are pushing Labor left.

This allows Labor to be pragmatic about not pushing Leftwing messaging and scaring away Centrists, while the greens can be as left-wing as they want because they don’t need to appeal to the centre, this is notable when it comes to Israel Palestine, where Labor are pragmatic, if very quiet on the issue, whilst the greens are somewhat overly enthusiastically pro Palestinian.

The median Australian opinion is that it the conflict does not concern us, but way too many civilians are dying.

Y el tercero:

Traditionally the conservative coalition have been the natural party of government, they ruled unimpeded from 1946 to 1972, and then retook government after what many consider a cia backed coup in 1975 to 1982

Because of the federal dominance of the conservatives Labor build up massive local infrastructure, especially among the unions and state governments. In australia the states are very independent for their own domestic policy, and traditionally they are dominated by Labor. Currently all but two of our states are ruled by Labor governments, and the two that are conservative controlled are very shaky.

Because of the longterm state control Labor has been able to push the whole nation leftwards for a long period of time without federal control.

The only way the conservative have been able to control the states is by massive gerrymandering, my state South Australia from the 50s to 70s was ruled under the playmander, where a rural district, with 700 people was equal to an urban district with 40’000, in queensland the conservative premier Joe bjekerke Peterson ran a police state, arresting Labor union leaders.

These hardships have forced all leftwing groups in Australia to bound together under the Labor party, otherwise no progress could be made, it was only after these cheating systems were abolished that the greens began to grow as a leftwing alternative.

Traditionally the states SA WA Canberra and Victoria are firmly Labor strongholds, while NSW (our largest state by population) and the NT are the swing states, whilst Tasmania and Queensland are Conservative strongholds.

The states tend to be ran by Labor right (because of the unions) and federal tends to be centre or left (because of membership)

The right mostly cares about economics, this is primarily because our country’s version of Reagan was from the Labor party and the Right faction (their leader is treasurer), meanwhile the left mostly cares about social policy (their leader is a lesbian, senator and the most popular politician in the country)

The greens are a strange party ideologically, likely because they have never federally gained power, and only formed short lived, unstable state coalitions with Labor. they were founded as a hippy’ish party in the 80s, that appealed to the upper middle class, however have had to recently purge many of their older members who are very socially conservative.

They are firmly leftwing, their former leader was an eco socialist, but the party was very vague on what exactly they want besides more investment in renewables, and no nuclear power. The party agrees with Labor on 95% of things, however often has to justify themselves to their Base by blocking Legislation in the senate by saying it’s not good enough, however they allow Labor to appeal to the centre without losing the left, so their existence is a net positive for the left in australia.

I don’t know about different electoral systems, our current party system was build by our national history.

There is a saying in the australian Left “Theres the Labor party, and the rest of them” There have been numerous right wing parties, coalitions, schemes to keep Labor out of power, but they have all withered and died, only Labor has stood the test of time.

Interesting however there have been attempts to form other “left wing” parties, namely from Labor right.

The right has actually broken away from Labor multiple times in the past, most notably in 20s with the UAP the late 40s with Lang Labour, and in the 50-70s when the white supremacist and Catholic factions broke away for various reasons. These incidents would always doom Federal Labour to a decade or more out of power, which forced the factions to create infrastructure around domestic and ideological disputes, notably the Labor party is very strict with how an MP votes, for example if the right dislikes abortion they cannot group up and vote against the government unless they can get the whole party to agree.

If such a rebellious act would happen, all MP’s and anyone related to them would be purged from The party, which is what happend in 2024 when a Labor left senator voted alongside the greens on an unimportant vote to do with gaza. The party does not allow any sort of rebellions.