In politics, as in cricket, Britain lags decades behind Australia. This is not really the place to parse how England’s “Bazball” style of cricket is a low-grade facsimile of the attacking approach with which Australia dominated the sport decades ago. But it is the place to note how British politics seems like a strange echo of our 2010s: that era when our major parties kept axing sitting prime ministers, and asylum seekers were never far from the centre of political debate.

On this, Britain’s impersonation is far more convincing than it is in cricket: four prime ministers in three years, and another in such dire trouble there are now the early rumblings of a leadership challenge. In that context, this week saw Britain’s Labour government finally do what its Rudd/Gillard counterparts did: accept that it is getting walloped on the immigration debate, and announce a conspicuously harsh asylum seeker policy. The details are different, but the thrust is familiar, making it easier to reject asylum claims, harder to appeal them, and conferring fewer rights on those whose claims succeed. On that last point, the headline policy has refugees waiting up to 20 years before being entitled to permanent residency, with their status reviewed every two-and-a-half years.

Illustration by Simon Letch

There is, however, one key difference. Australian Labor went through this process in the shadow of John Howard, while British Labour’s contest isn’t with the Tories, who remain a shell. Rather, it’s fending off one-time fringe dwellers like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson, both growing in prominence and the latter a veteran far-right figure. It’s........

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