Mark Latham Has Joined The Liberal Democrats, Australian Politics Needs To Die A Fiery Death
The singularity of awfulness has been reached.
Mark Latham’s transformation from a relatively coherent (although still kind of weird) Labor MP who came close to becoming Australia’s Prime Minister in 2004, to your inappropriate uncle who always pops up at at the family Christmas barbecue to say racist things and drone on about how “politically correct” the country is “these days” is finally complete.
This afternoon Latham announced he had joined the Liberal Democrats, the libertarian political party currently represented in the Senate by Australia’s other inappropriate Christmas barbecue uncle, David Leyonhjelm.
In a Facebook post Latham explained his decision was prompted by a recent experience at the Liberty Conference: “a wonderful forum supporting freedom of speech and opposing PC, social engineering and cultural Marxism.”
He went on to explain that he supported “80-90 percent” of the Liberal Democrats’ policy platform and that he decided to sign up in order to “play a role in fighting for our national values, based on personal freedom and responsibility.”
It still isn’t quite clear what values Latham holds other than opposition to “cultural Marxism” which seems to have nothing to do with either culture or Marxism, and instead appears to be a phrase Latham uses to describe anything he doesn’t like.
Latham’s decision to join the Liberal Democrats hasn’t exactly been met with rapturous applause.
Liberal Democrats: truly worse than the sum of its parts
— Lucie Robson (@lucierobson) May 8, 2017
I think I liked it better when Mark Latham was barely on twitter anonymously and all we had to do to avoid him was not watch Sky
— Angus Livingston (@anguslivingston) May 8, 2017
Latham and Lleyonhjelm are perfect together. It’s dickhead squared.
— Dee Madigan (@deemadigan) May 8, 2017
I can't think of a more devastating burn on both Mark Latham and the Lib Dees than them joining each other.
— privately furious (@arwon) May 8, 2017
Liberals: we're the most awkwardly racist party in Aus political history
Labour: hold my beer
Mark Latham: *passed out in the kiddie pool*
— John Kane (@gritfish) May 8, 2017
Mark Latham has joined the Liberal Democrats so going by his recent form the Liberal Democrats will be done in about six weeks
— Wil Anderson (@Wil_Anderson) May 8, 2017
latham going libertarian is absolutely a direct result of suddenly having the time to browse reddit all day
— Colley (@JamColley) May 8, 2017
There’s still a lot of questions that are yet to be answered. Is Latham running for parliament? What are the 10-20 percent of the Liberal Democrats’ policies that are too cooked even for him? Is he still going to be doing his extremely bad Facebook Live show, Mark Latham’s Outsiders? Actually, no one cares about the last one.
Thankfully Latham will be appearing on Andrew Bolt’s Sky News show tonight to explain his decision.
Mark Latham, David Leyonhjelm…. Andrew Bolt. I’m sorry. I can’t do this. It’s like a trifecta of terrible things in Australian politics. Burn it all to the ground.