Mainstream politicians must stop dodging the culture questions

This article was first published on the 26th June 2026 in the Australian Financial Review. A selection of Josh’s columns will be published here on Substack a few weeks after they appear in print.

“You’ve been married nine times!“, Dame Edna apparently exclaimed to Zsa Zsa Gabor. “What’s your secret?” One might ask the same of British democracy, as Westminster prepares to tie the knot with its seventh prime minister in a decade.

What’s the secret? It isn’t complex. The electorate, like a spouse in a loveless marriage, has stopped feeling heard.

Britain has no monopoly on this. In New York, the socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani just watched his candidates sweep the congressional primaries, knocking off establishment Democrats who never saw it coming. In Australia, One Nation is polling like a major party while Jim Chalmers’ budget landed like a dead rat on the doorstep.

The pattern repeats around the world. Centre-right parties are bleeding to the populist right. Centre-left parties are bleeding to the populist left. And the establishment is scrambling, sending in Andy Burnham on his three-legged horse to save the day.

Burnham was sworn into parliament three seconds ago by sounding like he cares about working people, while never touching the culture questions that drove those people away in the first place. He’s Keir Starmer in red lipstick.

The rupture isn’t only political. Karl Stefanovic, the most popular broadcaster in the country, is in hot water for getting too chummy with far-right populists on his podcast. As the political establishment fragments, so does the cultural establishment.

Full disclosure: I owe my podcasting career in part to Joe Rogan. I’ve been a guest on Rogan’s show seven times. I’ve seen the slow-motion tsunami of fragmentation up close.

Here’s how the mainstream can ride the wave without wiping out.