If Tories are to be rescued from self-destruction, salvation must come from party base
By Andrew Coyne, Postmedia News
June 21, 2013
Among the many questions surrounding next week’s Conservative party convention — which policy resolutions will be adopted, what will Stephen Harper say in his speech, who will win the biannual one-member-one-vote vs. equal-ridings beard-pull — one in particular stands out for me. Simply: Do they get it? Do the delegates understand what a fix the party is in, and why? And are they prepared to push the party to mend its ways?
It has become a commonplace of late to say the Tories have “lost their way.” That’s not about their navigational skills but their state of mind: an acute lack of self-awareness that blinds them to what they have become, a blinkered conviction of their own superior cleverness, a closed loop of defensiveness that interprets every criticism as proof of the rightness of the course they are on.
For if everyone — the courts, the bureaucracy, Elections Canada, the media, oh yes especially the media — is biased against them (for what else could possibly explain this heap of opprobrium?) then of course they must constantly be on the attack, and of course they cannot allow themselves to be weakened by internal dissent, and of course they cannot be open with the public about their plans. For that would only provide their enemies with ammunition.
This is the laager mentality that has taken hold in the upper reaches of the Tory party. It is the attitude of parties that have lost touch, not just with their principles or their supporters, but with reality. Toryism, in its current incarnation, resembles less an ideology than a pathology. If the party is to pull out of its current spiral it must be prepared to take a hard look at itself — starting with this convention. What is needed is less a change of course than a voyage within.
Politics is a slippery, opportunistic business at the best of times, and none of the parties is a beacon of decency. But a great many people of all persuasions or none have lately formed the same impression, that the Tories have taken politics in worrisome new directions. One has the sense, not just that they do not respect limits that had previously been observed, but that they don’t know where they are.
How to put this into words? Perhaps it is best expressed by what is not the case. You simply cannot count on this government to do what it says it will; to be straight with people; to take the high road; to behave with anything resembling spontaneity or goodwill. I mean it may, but you’re almost surprised when it does. Its default demeanour is sullen, wary, bullying, moronic. Its characteristic face is that of Peter Van Loan or Pierre Poilievre, and it is very much the face it deserves.
Policies, promises, principles, ethics: one by one the Tories have unburdened themselves of everything that could slow them on their march to majority. It’s not worth rehearsing all of these again here. But Conservative delegates might, as they go over the resolutions in their convention handbook, look back to previous conventions, years ago, and the sorts of things they used to debate, or indeed believe.
And as they contemplate all the many elements of conservatism that have been discarded along the way, from balanced budgets to ending corporate welfare to democratic reform and beyond, they should understand that it is all of a piece — that the vacuum of policy and the dictatorship of the leader and the thuggish partisanship and now the mushrooming ethical scandals are not separate and coincidental, but intimately linked; that the compromise of one very easily becomes the compromise of all; that when the dam of principle is breached, autocracy and partisanship and corruption are what rush to fill the gap.
Perhaps the explains the perpetual Tory scowl of late. Perhaps, in some vague sense, they are aware of what they have given up. Or perhaps it is simply that, for all their compromises, they are now running consistently below 30 per cent in the polls. But the reality is that a party that could perfectly well, if it chose, offer a positive, uplifting message — an optimistic vision of freer trade, freer markets and freer people — instead offers little more in the way of policy than a grab bag of settled scores (take that, gun registry; count on this, long-form census), never risking, never daring, never asking the public to endorse something larger, never explaining what it is doing, or why.
We used to do things with white papers in this country. Remember them? That’s what a government put out when it had something big to propose. The point was to lay out an ambitious proposal, set forth the policy rationale, canvas reaction. In due course, adjustments would be made — yes, compromises, but in the service of an idea — and legislation brought forward for debate in the House. How is policy made today? With a stray line in a speech, or under the hammer of “time allocation,” or bundled together in mammoth omnibus bills.
But the party was unlikely to object so long as it seemed to be working. For the longest while, it remained under the spell of Harper the master tactician who saw around every corner, the chess player, five moves ahead of everyone else. This calamitous spring has put paid to that. What has been more striking throughout, whether the issue was the discontent of the backbench or the Senate scandals, has been the sheer incompetence on display in the prime minister’s office. How out of touch does a government have to be, having provoked the nearest thing to a revolt over its handling of Mark Warawa’s motion in committee, to do exactly the same to Brent Rathgeber? In what universe was paying off a sitting Senator a good way to defuse an expenses scandal? What bag of rocks in Tory communications was responsible for the daily shift in explanations, from one improbable lie to another? For the prime minister’s long silence? For that ghastly public speech to caucus? For the comically ill-judged demand that Rathgeber resign and run in a byelection? For the clumsy outreach to the Barrie Advance? For those embarrassing anti-Trudeau flyers and attack ads?
So if the party is to be rescued from the self-destructive path it is now on, it seems the membership will have to stage something of an intervention. It is highly unlikely that the Prime Minister can or will lead the exercise in reflection of the party needs — still less the hardened zealots surrounding him, or even the frightened rabbits in caucus, notwithstanding some recent signs of life. It is still possible for him to put together a substantial policy agenda to take into the next election: his speech to the convention will be an early signal of his intentions, as will the expected cabinet shuffle and, if the rumours are true, fall Throne Speech. But to change the party’s tailgunner style of politics, for which, make no mistake, he alone is responsible? It amounts to asking him to be a different person.
No, it will have to come up from the base. It is the base that will have to call the party back to its founding ideals. It is the base that will have to remind the leadership of how far it has strayed. It is the base that will have to call those responsible for the party’s decline to account. It is the base that will have to teach those in the leadership the virtues of respect: respect for party principle, respect for their own MPs, respect for the opposition, respect for Parliament, respect for the public.
I do not know whether even the base can. But it seems that only they can, and the time to begin is at next week’s convention.
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