If the rise of Britain's Nigel Farage is to be understood, significant parliamentary representation is no longer needed to dominate media coverage, nor be considered ready for government.
Farage's flatulent micro-party, Reform (nee UKIP of Brexit-fanning fame) secured just five seats in the 650 House of Commons in 2024.
Farage himself was one of the newcomers - previous electoral rejections forcing him to make ends meet on the humble salary of an MEP ($233K). That's right, the fulminating "Mr Brexit" was simultaneously anti-Europe and a 20-year member of the European Parliament.
More front than Harrods, you might say. Not that his ballooning base cares. As Donald Trump demonstrates daily, such glaring hypocrisies are mere water off a duck's back.
Just a year after Keir Starmer rode to Number 10 with a record majority, polls suggest Reform, which has never governed anything, would win an election (if held now) with north of 300 seats. Labour could go from 401 currently to as few as 80 or 90.
This epochal shift is occurring within one electoral cycle.
And it is structural. The beleaguered Starmer now explicitly regards Farage as his chief threat and even many Tories believe their party, the oldest and most institutional mainstay of British politics, is toast (kippers optional).
What's all this got to do with Australia? Well, quite a bit, really.
While the contrast between the fortunes of Starmer Labour and Albanese Labor seems sharp right now, that could change. Albanese, who addressed the British Labour conference in Liverpool last week, has long provided counsel and inspiration to his UK counterparts.
His model of small target opposition, underpinned by a back-to-basics emphasis on working people, provided a formula for British Labour's recrudescence.
And the Australian had more encouragement for them in Liverpool. Remember the workers. Defend democracy and do it conspicuously. Be optimistic. Reclaim the notion of patriotic pride in Britain from the relentlessly negative, flag-waving extremes - populists selling fear and fanning divisions.
Some media in Australia were highly critical of the Australian PM for speaking in a party-political forum while representing Australia as Prime Minister. These complaints were both shortsighted and pedantic, ignoring the perilous British context and the clear national interests at stake. These include that Australia, already reeling from America's shambolic descent from global leadership and strategic reliability, would be seriously exposed if its other chief ally, Britain, succumbed to the racist intolerances of Farage and the violence of ex-football hooligan Tommy Robinson.
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The opposition here either regards this risk as inconsequential or it simply lacks the maturity to see it. Shadow foreign minister Michaelia Cash railed against Albanese to Sky News: "This wasn't diplomacy. It wasn't advancing Australia's interests. It was pure partisanship. The Prime Minister of Australia inserting himself into another nation's domestic politics."
Is that what this was? Simply a vanity project?
A more plausible explanation is that Albanese believes the British Labour faithful need a reality check and the Starmer government needs to rise to the urgent task of deflating Farage's illusory promise.
A veteran of politics, Albanese can see what is coming for British Labour if these things are not understood - an inward collapse through leadership challenges and open brawling.
A measured and perceptive opposition might ponder that risk and its implications for Australia - especially in light of Trump's mercurial tendencies. For example, what do Farage and his band of who-knows-whom from the political fringes think of AUKUS? Even before that, what might be the views of a more left-wing Labour PM about AUKUS, America, Ukraine and Israel?
In fact, a serious, responsible Australian opposition might even follow the example of centre-right mainstreamers in the Commons, like former Tory leadership contender and ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, who observed in a Horizons Talk last month that he genuinely wanted Starmer to succeed.
That success turns first on survival. Like Albanese in his first term, Starmer's small target strategy in opposition has proved an albatross in government, particularly in the straitjacket he set for himself through harsh fiscal rules more in tune with the austerity policies of the conservatives.
The lesson from the rise of hardline populists from Italy, Germany and France to our Anglophone "parents" the US and UK, is that when living standards for working people are not maintained, xenophobes flourish and the centre, no matter how long it has held, fails.
It seems obvious now, but when Trump won in 2016 - considered unthinkable until it happened - blue-collar Americans had not received a real wage increase, basically since the 1970s, all while billionaires multiplied. The Democrats sat on their hands.
Labor's support for minimum wage increases recognises this truth.
Contrary to the depictions of Albanese's speech as some sort of global victory lap, the constant thrust of his speech was actually about unity.
"I want to finish with an old truth that both our movements know ... Unity of labour is the hope of the world. That has always been labour at our best. Unity of party - and unity of purpose ... Unity of labour reflects the power of solidarity to drive change. And it reflects the responsibility of labour to promote unity."
Unity, unity, unity. Got it? Put another way, division would be very good for Farage but very bad for Australia.
