This Labor government is the Ed Sheeran of Australian politics – Amy Remeikis

There is more opportunity to push back against toxic centrism

Source: Prime Minister’s office

Anthony Albanese has returned from New York and the latest UN General Assembly, which, like all UNGAs, saw the nations most at risk from global warming and genocide ignored while those creating the conditions for destruction wrung their hands and preached unity.

Unity, in this sense, means deal with it. The Nepalese prime minister, Balendra Shah, made the point that western nations ensure “intercontinental missiles arrive on time. Rifles and ammunition cross borders, clear every bottleneck, meet each deadline”.

Meanwhile, farmers in his nation can’t procure fertiliser or fuel at affordable prices to feed their people. Shah outlined western hypocrisy just one week after Labor and the Liberal Party worked to shut down any talk of the Red Lines Package, which would hold Australia to the standard Albanese claimed we held in his latest ‘we are the world’ speech at the UN.

But at the core of all those empty promises is the simple truth that the Australian government does not want anything to change. On every issue, Labor has done the least it can do. The barest of minimums designed to give some kernels of truth to its claims of being a responsible global citizen, while not having to do anything which would create any sense of discomfort.

That’s not new – that’s essentially how western governments have operated since post-war reconstruction and especially since the 1970s, when neoliberalism took charge. The difference now, as Sheeran recently discovered when he attempted to be apolitical about a genocide, is that it all belongs to a different era. Albanese is trying to govern as if it is still the 1990s and 2000s, when a West Wing-style speech made (small l) liberals feel like they could run through walls as they patronised and faux-intellectualised anyone who believed there were dangers in only ever recognising the centre.

Albanese’s Labor is reactionary to the bully class – be it media, billionaire or nation. Watch as Australia becomes even more mealy mouthed about criticising the United States, or sanctioning Israel, in a bid to win a spot on the UN Security Council.

Labor pretends they need to play nice so they avoid a veto, and then can make ‘real change’ once on the council, but forget that the price of being on the council is to never upset the western nations causing the harm.

What point is a Security Council that can’t recognise a genocide because the nation responsible for it – who just so happens to be our ‘main ally’ – has a veto? What, pray tell, does Australia think it will do differently when it is at the table, to what it is doing now? Because power, when granted, only ever comes from above. And to hold on to that sort of anointed power means never upsetting those who have lent it to you. It’s granted knowing it can be taken away. That’s how Albanese runs his government, and how imperial nations run the world.

The ‘tolerant’ attitude Sheeran tried to preach in excuse for kowtowing to Zionist power – under the guise of being ‘apolitical’ and centrist, but which in reality just keeps the bully class comfortable and in control – is also how Labor, UK Labour and establishment Democrats handle power.

The moral and ethical bankruptcy at the heart of that sort of power has been made exceedingly clear. And yet Albanese, like Sheeran, like his contemporaries in the so called ‘centre-left’ parties around the world, cling to it like a life raft.

It is this thinking that leads to Labor strategists excusing the latest selfie with Donald Trump as a “distasteful necessity” in order to keep Trump happy, even as it completely rubs Albanese of the authority which helped him to victory over Peter Dutton’s embrace of Trump in 2025.

Labor talks of ‘universality’ for services, but has no long-term view of socialism – by design. That would require actively shifting power, and Labor has no interest in that. The strongest stance Albanese and Labor have mustered is against Big Tech, but even that leans towards ‘working together’ which means, in bully power speak, allowing the tech companies to create the boundaries of what they are willing to accept.

You’ll hear more about ‘frontier models’ trained ‘locally’ and then you’ll see more approvals for fossil fuels in anticipation of underwriting the data centres we’ll need for all those ‘local frontier’ AI models – which will, of course, highlight their renewable power, but not the gas accompanying it.

But none of this should make people feel powerless. Far from it. There is more opportunity for pushback than almost any other point in the last 50 years, against this toxic centrism. As Sheeran discovered, fuck around and find out. Not taking a side is siding with the bullies. There is another way. Labor can be forced to pay attention – all it takes is enough people to make them.