OPINION
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Don't imagine this is just a British earthquake. The tremors will reach Australia, particularly rattling the left.
Australian strategists were at the core of the British Conservative victory. They learnt lessons from the Australian election in May, took them to London and no doubt learnt new lessons there which they will bring back.
The sweeping victory of the Conservatives raises huge questions for the left in Britain but also in Australia and for the Democrats in the United States.
Is Labour (or Labor or the Democrats) the party of the traditional working class or is it the party of the "woke" - those young, middle-class people for whom climate change, marriage equality, Palestine and transgender rights are top of the agenda? Can it be both?
Issues which preoccupy metropolitan culture warriors don't seem to be as important beyond their circles. They matter but more basic issues play stronger beyond the chatterati bubble. And they may cause resentment in down-at-heel communities. We are repeatedly told that this election is the one where the young get active to stop the old stealing their future. It doesn't happen.
Immediately after the British result, the American columnist Andrew Sullivan wrote about the US (but it is worth thinking about in Australia, too): "One lesson from the UK: if the Democrats don't stop their hard-left slide, they'll suffer the same fate as Labour. If they don't move off their support for mass immigration, they're toast. Ditto the wokeness. Left Twitter is not reality."
Labour in Britain has lost seats in its once impregnable heartland, the old mining areas of the economically ravaged north of England.
It seems that many people there were resentful of the immigration which cool metropolitans welcomed. Immigration has been a simmering issue in Britain for half a century but debate was stifled as "racist". It's now exploded like a volcano which has engulfed the left.
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For those who voted Tory in the industrial areas, Brexit - Britain's exit from the European Union - was often the touchstone. No matter how often professors of economics told them that it was madness, they chose to raise two fingers. Better off Londoners sneered but the brexiters didn't care.
So one lesson is: listen to the people far from the metropolitan centres. Don't rely on the Twitterati. Twitter is not the world.
Labour was ambiguous on Brexit. The ultra-left Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, never made clear whether or not he wanted divorce from the EU. Some around him see the EU as a "capitalist club" which would block the socialist project.
Labour dithered. It seemed to triangulate, trying to indicate to "remainers" that it was the party of remain and to "leavers" that it was the party of leave. Instead of keeping both sides on board, both jumped ship.
The lesson is that clarity works - but you knew that after the election in May. "Labor will tax you to death" was the Liberal slogan then. It was as clear and direct as a punch (whatever Labor said about the truth or falsehood of it).
"Get Brexit Done" was Boris Johnson's equivalent - even as the trade and legal experts said that it wasn't as simple as that. The three direct, hard words were written on a construction digger which Mr Johnson drove through a wall. It was on social media. It was unavoidable - simple, clear, tough.
Brexit will happen after this election. He will become Prime Minister without opposition, either in his own party or across on the other side.
In a way, now comes the hard bit for Mr Johnson. Having promised a spending bonanza, how can he deliver what the experts said couldn't be delivered.
He said, too, that there would be no customs checks between the Northern Irish part of the United Kingdom and the mainland. That may not be do-able - and Northern Ireland's peace is not something to be tampered with easily. It's dry fuel only needing a spark.
A further lesson for the left: parties don't win elections by saying taxes will rise. Bill Shorten knows that. So, now, does Jeremy Corbyn.
If voters want increased public spending and lower taxes, how can that contradiction be squared? When Tony Blair and Labour gained power in Britain, he and his finance minister spent years preparing the ground by promising no rise in income tax. Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Bill Shorten convinced voters that their incomes and savings wouldn't be raided.
There is another lesson from the British election and it is a particularly depressing one for those on the left and right who value democracy: falsehood flourished.
And people didn't seem to care.
A true picture of a baby lying on a hospital floor because of a shortage of beds was quickly dubbed as fake - and the fake meme travelled around the world twice before truth had got its shoes back on.
The Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland described how he had met voters in (de)industrial areas of northern Britain and the United States who accepted that Mr Trump and Boris Johnson didn't tell the truth (and Mr Johnson has been sacked twice for dishonesty) but these voters still thought that both men told a different kind of truth - they tell it like it is.
"While other politicians trimmed and euphemised, Trump just came out with it: insulting women, Mexicans, the Chinese, war heroes, you name it - political correctness be damned," as Jonathan Freedland put it.
One of the architects of the Johnson triumph was Isaac Levido who, according to the New Statesman, is a "bearded Australian" hired by the Tories to "do for Johnson what he did for Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister whose unexpected election victory Levido masterminded in May."
Mr Levido suceeded brilliantly. He will be back in Canberra, refreshed and ready. He's learnt a lot. His new knowledge is coming our way.
Depending on your point of view, you may rejoice or despair.