Peta Credlin: “People haven’t changed. The fundamentals of economics and politics haven’t changed. Perhaps the circumstances of the West are more difficult due to the rise of China and the challenge of Islamism. In the end, the popular mood is a function of how countries respond to challenges as much as the challenges themselves.

“I think it’s more a failure of leadership than any new and more serious crisis. There have been periods of poor leadership before. The 1930s come to mind and in a different way, the 1970s – certainly in Australia. At present, you would have to say that the Left are winning the game organisationally, and have put in place a funding model via trade unions and professional activist groups that leaves the Centre-Right for dead. Conservatives have been complacent and relied on the motivation of aspiration, and the family, to support freedom, the individual and a values-driven leadership – but that’s now under challenge with the way the Left have taken hold of schools, universities and sections of the media.

“I am still optimistic and want to believe that eventually better leaders will make their way forward and a period of eclipse will turn into a period of resurgence. One thing is for certain, the pace is so much faster in political life that we may not see governments survive beyond a single term. Now that’s bearable if you’re looking at five-year parliamentary terms in the UK, even four for the US president, but parlous for good government in the case of Australia’s three-year parliamentary terms.”

Sunder Katwala: “Greater volatility does seem stronger than any directional shift in most countries. Germany looks like an important exception: a stronger economic performance reinforcing strong public support for the broad centre which is deep-rooted in the Federal Republic’s democratic political culture. One reason for the volatility is that we have increasingly polarised politics on very fine margins. In the United States, ever since the Bush-Gore contest of 2000, the nation has been split down the middle. There has been a sense of both sides dialling up the heat: there is a lot of energy in the politics of a culture war on both sides. There are bridge-builders too – Obama certainly tried – but they appear in decline. Non-Trump Republicans have been much more timid than seemed likely in the campaign. And one of the challenges of any effort to depolarise is that neither side wants to risk disarming if the other side is going to stay in the trenches. I am not sure there is quite the same appetite – or institutional encouragement – of an ever-more-heated polarisation outside the United States.

“In Britain, the awareness that we are a more divided, fragmented and anxious society than we perhaps have imagined is a driver to pay more attention to overlooked issues – whether that is immigration or inequality – but I think there is also an aversion to an ever-more-polarised politics. There is a big contrast with how people talk about Brexit on social media and at the school-gate, for example. Many of the political projects with momentum do have the ability to mobilise, but often with an intense appeal to a relatively narrow group, on both the populist right and left.  Part of the reason for the volatility and unpredictability is that politicians seem better at engaging their own tribes than finding the common ground across them.”

Steve Richards: “The two are connected. Since the early 1980s there has been a fairly narrow divide between the mainstream left and right in much of the Western world. The differences were still significant but not as overtly wide as they were before. The coming together of the two sides led to a different way of conducting politics, more focus-group driven and media-obsessed. Mainstream political leaders tried pathetically hard to please voters only to alienate them even more. As they became increasingly cautious in their public utterances they seemed less human and more shifty. While ideological debates became less vivid there was a greater focus on political process, ‘spin’, ‘trust’, ‘sleaze’, and non-partisan but relatively trivial themes that alienated voters even more than the more significant rows over big ideological issues had done previously.

“It was always a myth to suggest that there was no longer a left and a right divide in the modern era. In reality there are different ways of addressing, say, the demands for a better health service and in framing economic policy at a time of sweeping change. The division is becoming more vivid again and the arguments that arise from ideological differences will lead to a different way of conducting politics. The focus group and opinion poll will be viewed slightly more sceptically. The battle over ideas will become more important. Electoral volatility partly reflects the limited choice over the last two decades. If parties are similar, why not transfer support from one to another, or lose interest altogether? The rise of outsiders has reflected the wider disillusionment with mainstream politics but if outsiders win elections they are doomed to become insiders too.

“The juxtaposition of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is ultimately a shallow one. Some argue that the most important divide is between ‘open’ and ‘closed’, those that support free trade and those who do not being one example. This is an important division and has been for centuries. But the debate about ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ does not provide solutions to many modern questions. A deeper and more thought-through debate that at least recognises the validity of left and right as a significant ideological divide would help to bolster fragile democracy. That debate is starting to take place.”

Peta Credlin: “There’s no doubt that the corrupting influence of the post-modernist left in universities has had an impact. How many high school students, for instance, have converted “everyone is entitled to an opinion” into “all opinions are equal”? Still, you can’t design a car or build a bridge on the basis of gender studies and identity politics. The hard sciences, and the need actually to get on in the world, will eventually produce a fightback.

“In some communities, it is already under way. With some of the world’s largest coal, gas and uranium resources, Australia is facing an energy crisis because we have re-cast sound economic policy in the light of climate change zealotry. Common sense and conservation should go hand in hand but we lost our way thinking we could change the world without a fiscal cost. It doesn’t work like that and when we’re responsible for less than 1.4 per cent of global emissions, it’s an economic suicide note. Climates change might just be the catalyst as politically correct climatology inevitably gives way to empiricism.”

Sunder Katwala: “Culture and identity do appear to be at least as important as economics. Increasingly, the most important cleavage in many electoral contests is educational status: that the left is doing well among the increasing number of graduates is a potential source of long-term strength, but a considerable challenge in how to secure or manage a broad coalition to get elected or govern. The danger this presents for social democratic and centre-left parties is endlessly discussed.

That a similar dilemma faces the democratic right has been rather less discussed, partly because academia is much more interested in the state of the left than the right. Both major British parties will want to win in Kensington and Mansfield at the next General Election. If parties of the right hope to make gains by being the socially conservative party of the blue-collar and left-behind voters, they may need to become less committed to a small state, low tax agenda and become more open to state intervention in the economy. If, as seems perhaps more likely, centre-right parties will remain ideologically sceptical about the size of the state, then it may need to pitch to more socially liberal younger voters in the south of England, the children of their existing voters, adopting a more measured approach to managed migration that could fit more comfortably with a generally pro-market philosophy.

“The right would hope to attract young voters whose ambition is to get a decent degree, find a good job and take out a mortgage on a property. So-called left-behind voters may then feel their voice is ignored, whether the issue is the financial crisis or immigration.”

Steve Richards: “The left-liberal dominance in education, arts and entertainment has been a constant factor for decades and has made no difference to the fate of left-wing or right-wing political parties. In the UK during the 1980s a radical, left-inclined Channel Four was launched and left-wing comedians from Ben Elton to Alexei Sayle sold out theatres across the land. The Conservatives still won landslides. There was no connection between the two. The left-liberal ascendency in education, arts and entertainment is also countered by a largely Conservative supporting media in the UK, although the nature of that support has not always helped the Conservative Party, encouraging at times complacency or shallow thinking dressed up as modernisation.

The more recent rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders and others is related much more to economic issues than to a leftish culture. The fashionable slogans of our time are more revealing than they seem. Some voters feel ‘left behind’. The same voters want to ‘seize back control’. In the UK these terms are seen solely through the prism of Brexit, but they imply a need for mediating agencies that would help to make voters feel more connected.  They reflect also a fear of more fractured working lives that leave some voters with a sense of fearful impotence.

“To some extent Corbyn and Sanders offer hope to voters in their faith that the state can intervene to address the fundamental causes of voters’ insecurity. In highlighting their outrage at widening inequality they imply at least that they would be willing to pull levers that will make a difference. Neither has been tested in government, but from the relative safety of opposition they offer hope. There is also plenty of space for One Nation Conservatives to put the case for powerful but efficient national or local institutions to play a more robust role in a global economy. Such a positive approach will have more impact than an attempt to emulate the ‘fashionable left’ in education and the arts.”

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Yesterday the jury examined the general rise of the Left in advanced nations. Tomorrow it will look at volatility in democracies.

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Are advanced nations at a political turning point, with public moods favouring bigger state, bigger spending, more economically interventionist policies?

Peta Credlin: “Not necessarily. Americans elected Donald Trump not Hillary Clinton, let alone Bernie Sanders, and the Brexit vote was arguably a rejection of the statist EU. People are unhappy with the political establishment for numerous reasons: since the global financial crash (and for much longer in some countries) wages have been stagnant while asset prices have moved beyond the reach of many working people; the international pecking order has changed against the West; many people feel that their values and instincts are under assault due to the long march through the institutions of the counter-cultural left; but most importantly, the political establishment of the centre right and centre left has seemed impotent to deal with people’s concerns, ignoring them (David Cameron), attacking them (Hillary Clinton), or failing to address them (George W Bush).

“People want a government that makes a difference and improves their lives but they don’t think that money grows on trees or that big government can solve every problem. In Australia the only issue that matters is energy policy. The push by adherents of the climate change religion was embraced when it meant virtue signalling and a cost-free nod to the climate agenda. Now that it has sent businesses to the wall and taken Australia from one of the world’s most reliable, most affordable energy nations to one of the most expensive – on the back of a purge of coal and expansion of taxpayer-subsidised renewables – the people are starting to push back.

“I don’t believe there’s enough evidence that the political mood has swung to the conventional left; just that politics is less predictable than ever and success goes to the people and parties who are most carefully listening and most plausibly responding to a very discontented public.”

Sunder Katwala: “No. I think people are pretty agnostic about the size of the state itself. The libertarian case for a much reduced role for the state seems to fall away quite quickly when the state is doing things that people like or want. Pressure for a stronger state comes from the right – on crime, borders and defence – as well as from the left, which wants less state on social issues, and more on economic ones. But I don’t see strong evidence of any sustained public desire for a much bigger state overall, especially once it has to be paid for.

“That is partly because the shrinking of the state was exaggerated too. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did more to reshape expectations about the scope of the state than to actually shrink it. Public spending was 43% of GDP in Britain in 1979 and it was 42% in 1996. Reagan cut taxes much more than he reduced spending: that put him on the popular side of both arguments, at the price of a booming deficit. More than any sustained shift to the left or right, there is often more of a ‘thermostatic’ balancing tendency in public attitudes over time. A long period of right-of-centre government, focused on sound finances, can lead to increased concern about investing in public services. When the left is in, increased spending on schools and hospitals is popular, but there are more concerns about taxes, efficiency and value for money. Voters in most big democracies remain torn by that dilemma, unless other people can pay the taxes to spend more money.”

Steve Richards: “We are at a turning point as significant as the sea change that swept James Callaghan out of power in the UK in1979, a tide that formed the backdrop to the Reagan/Thatcher ideological dominance of the 1980s and 1990s. The financial crash in 2008 triggered new tidal waves. The UK general election earlier this year reflected the changing landscape with the main issues relating to how the state could be more active. Key debates in the UK campaign included how to raise the funds required for a growing elderly population and how the government could and should mediate in markets perceived to be failing.

“The so-called outsiders, from Donald Trump to Jeremy Corbyn, are bound by one common theme. They meet a demand for the state to intervene more. Trump might be ‘anti-government’ in theory but he was elected on a programme of intervention and high spending on capital projects that was not dissimilar in some respects to the programme advocated by Bernie Sanders. Trump reconciled his loathing of ‘big government’ by personifying the state. He, Donald Trump, would intervene in labour markets and invest billions in infrastructure.

“The question of what governments can do dominates virtually every election in advanced nations. Compare this with elections before the 2008 financial crash where the main theme was what governments should not do. Tony Blair won a landslide in 1997 after a campaign in which the leadership pledged to stick to the previous Conservative government’s spending plans and income tax levels. Although Theresa May remains Prime Minister, the 2017 election campaign marked a shift to the left in terms of the stated aims of all the main parties.”

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Tomorrow we’ll post the jurors’ answers to question two;

“Is the advance of left-wing politicians like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders down to economic issues or are we seeing the long-term fruits of a gradual left-liberal ascendancy in education, arts and entertainment?”