The year 2019 brought success for conservatives in the UK and Australia, with Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison celebrating “landslide” and “miracle” election victories, respectively. Both wins were attributed less to sound policy than with the careful preparation and execution of ruthless campaigning by the same political strategist, Isaac Levido, to highlight the economic recklessness of the left and strike “anger, excitement, pride, fear” into voter’s hearts.
In Australia this fearmongering bled into the climate debate, with the Liberal-National Party (LNP) coalition making the economic cost of climate action a dominant election issue. The LNP coalition used “modelling” that put a price tag of $264bn on the opposition’s climate policies. The modelling was discredited by climate experts, who showed that it failed to consider the economic benefits of investing in renewable energy and new technologies or to quantify the costs of not acting to prevent climate change. But the seed of doubt planted in voters’ minds was enough to secure victory for the LNP.
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