Anger is one of our foundational emotions. We can instantly recognise it in another human. And in politics we love to let it drive the drama of policy, and how it’s covered.

One Nation won the Farrer by-election on Saturday, claiming its first seat in the Lower House.

Much of that will victory be put down to people’s anger, the “f–k the lot of youse” attitude that Rob Harris, reporting for the Nine Newspapers, identified in his profile of voters in the town of Griffith.

We can recognise that anger fairly easily – right-wing anger and the politics of grievance is an ongoing theme in a lot of Western nations.

We know how to deal with it – our politics moves further to the right. That those policies don’t work to address the root cause of the grievance doesn’t matter, politicians can tell the media they are doing something, that they recognise the anger, they understand it, and they are responding to it.

Most of the time, that means doing exactly what they have always done, but, as Tim Dunlop wrote in a recent piece, focused on Anthony Albanese’s most recent Western Australian address, dressing it up a little with rhetoric.

Angus Taylor is coating his speeches in One Nation sauce, further pushing the bounds of acceptable public racism, fear and public enemies. Albanese prefers to crumb his speeches with progressive notes,........

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