Australian and British politics have one thing in common: in both countries the right of politics is shattered.

Australia’s Liberal party, in coalition with the regional Nationals, was walloped at the most recent general election by the Australian Labor party. Its then leader, Peter Dutton, lost his seat, leaving behind a centre-right leaderless, rudderless, and at war with itself. Dutton’s deputy, long-serving former minister Sussan Ley (she added the extra ‘s’ for numerological reasons), took the reins of the shattered Liberals, while post-election the Nationals broke and re-formed the coalition. Ley and her vanquished party looked down and out for a decade or more, leaving Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, rampant and unchallenged by his opposition.

That was until last month’s anti-Semitic massacre at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, when Albanese, having presided over a government that failed to stop the wave of Jew hate building ever since 7 October, then failed to respond effectively to the anger and grief of not only Australia’s Jewish community, but the whole nation. Ley, however, read the national mood shrewdly, and showed real empathy towards the families of the dead and wounded. From the verge of overthrow by her own party, Ley suddenly was setting the agenda, and Albanese looked rattled and reactive.

So much so, that Ley demanded parliament be recalled from its summer recess to pass urgent measures to combat anti-Semitism. The government was forced to agree, and last week introduced a hate speech bill, drafted in haste with........

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