The global ground is shifting, and Morrison knows it

Such are the heady preconditions which have seen the world - the liberal democratic part, at least - turn noticeably leftward these past 18 months.

Listening to the British Tory leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, outline the priorities for the G7+ summit in Cornwall, one could be excused for thinking the social democrats were back.

And perhaps they are, in all but parliamentary terms. Indeed, maybe the left is finally swinging some lead in the big debates, even if it cannot swing too many elections.

Still, if it puts up relics like Jeremy Corbyn, what can it expect? Recall the acerbic summary of the then British Labour leader by Australia's erstwhile foreign minister, Gareth Evans.

Delivered in comically staccato style in 2019, Evans described the ageing socialist as: "Jeremy Corbyn, 1970s, polytechnic, Trot."

If he had volunteered a partnering haiku for Corbyn's opponent, it might have read: "Boris, rapscallion bounder, nihilist, Etonian, twat."

Less than two years later, though, and Johnson is morphing.

Opening the G7+ meeting of Britain and its global peers, he listed goals that could have come more seamlessly from across the aisle.

These include addressing the vast global disadvantage of girls' access to education and the consequences of that discrimination; getting the rich world to supply at least 1 billion vaccines for poorer countries; dramatically stepping up the world's ambition on greenhouse gas emissions; and collectively ensuring that in rebuilding national economies, care is taken to avoid making the rich richer, and the poor, poorer.

"It is vital that we don't repeat the mistakes of the last great crisis, the last big economic recession of 2008 when the recovery was not uniform across all parts of society," Johnson counselled fellow G7 members with cameras rolling.

"What's gone wrong with this pandemic, what risks being a lasting scar, is the inequalities that have been entrenched. We need to make sure that as we recover, we level up across our societies - we need to build back better."

He spoke of the "huge opportunity" to achieve the "vision for a cleaner, greener world" and a "solution to the problems of climate change in all those ideas, in those technologies, that we're all addressing".

"Together I think there is a potential to generate many, many millions of high-wage, high-skilled jobs, and I think that is what the people of our countries now want us to focus on."

He said that as well as ensuring no repeat of the pandemic, "people" expected governments to be "building back better together ... greener ...and fairer. And building back more equal. Maybe in a more gender-neutral, a more feminine way."

Imagine such language occurring in the toxic orbit of Donald Trump. You can't.

Despite his vulgar narcissism, Trump had a way of beguiling fellow conservatives, and thus dragging them down around him. Witness the moral surrender of the GOP. Witness also Scott Morrison's indecorous attendance at a campaign-style Trump rally in Ohio in late-2019. Departmental officials and travelling media were aghast.

Clearly in thrall, Morrison even went as far as to align with the isolationist carnival-barker against China. And he did it from US soil.

He then flew home to drive it home, railing against what he called "negative globalism" in a speech at the Lowy Institute.

But it's a different atmosphere now.

With Joe Biden in the White House prioritising climate change, alliances, and multilateralism, Morrison knows the ground has shifted. And he's moving too.

It may yet prove temporary, but the balance of moral authority has swung away from vituperative demagogues and back towards something the right's hero, Margaret Thatcher, claimed did not actually exist - society.

The flinty Tory lashed socialists for believing in government solutions and collective, community structures.

"They are casting their problems at society, and you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first," she said in an interview in 1987.

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Having flooded the economy with wage subsidies and pandemic payments by borrowing more than any government before him, Morrison has undergone a crash course in state responsibility when markets fail.

Now, in his capacity as an invited G7+ guest, his emphasis reflects the new collectivist zeitgeist.

It's all about strengthening multilateral ties, and drawing together like-minded countries to stare down vindictive authoritarian states operating outside the rules, intent on using intimidation to force compliance.

This is a welcome return to the very architecture relied on by a middle power, because it is only through these mechanisms that an export-reliant nation such as Australia can vouchsafe its income and leverage-up its influence.

As the former Australian ambassador to China, Geoff Raby has noted, diplomacy is not merely the best defence for this enormous and sparsely populated land mass we call Australia - it is the only practical defence.

Relieved of his Trumpist infatuation, Morrison can now get back to pursuing Australia's orthodox interest in strengthening the international community. This, in the end, is the key advantage free societies have over autocracies.

Where the Western democracies have friends, brutalist states like China only have fellow outliers - pariah states like North Korea and Myanmar, and minnows that surrender self-respect in the face of intimidation and money.

Of course, Morrison's return to multilateralism means he'll have to ditch his party's own isolationist indulgence and move leftward on climate change - but mercifully not as far as that green-left Tory, Boris Johnson.