Tories risk wrong turn

Party would be wise to steer clear of populism road

During the Harper years, the annual Manning Conference — convened by the Manning Centre, founded by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning — served as a kind of Conservative party in exile: a haven for decency and thoughtfulness amid the brain- dead thuggery of the time. If the conference has grown increasingly partisan over the years, it has generally been an enlightened partisanship.

This year’s conference is particularly well timed. A number of coincident events have combined to put the party, and the movement, at something of a crossroads: Donald Trump’s election, and the rise of far- right populist parties elsewhere; the insurgent campaign by similar forces — anti- Muslim, antirefugee, anti- elite, crudely nationalist — in Canada, culminating in the current hysteria over, of all things, a parliamentary motion; the rise and sudden f all of Milo Yiannopoulos, the leading voice of the nihilistic, say- anything “alt- right” in the United States; and of course, the federal Conservative leadership race, now entering its final months.

The campaign has featured some of the best and worst of the Conservative party. There are candidates championing exciting economic ideas to raise- national productivity and make life more affordable for average people; candidates defending important principles with candour, even in the face of party orthodoxy; candidates representing, at the least, agreeability, pragmatism and outreach.

But there are also candidates appealing, with transparent calculation, to the worst sorts of fears and divisions; roving con men looking for their next takeover target; erstwhile diplomats looking for their souls; single- issue shills and self- promoting no-hopers and everything in between. The sight of four of them lining up to kiss Ezra ( The Rebel Commander) Levant’s ring at his most recent fearapalooza was mortifying: one felt only shame and embarrassment for all of them.

So the leadership race, which had once seemed at worst a snooze, at best mildly encouraging, is turning into something more existential. The party is being beckoned down a very dark road, and if it succumbs to that temptation will consign itself to the margins of Canadian politics for many years, though not without giving amplified voice to some pretty marginal sentiments. The candidates themselves will meet for another debate at the Manning Con- ference, but the same tensions and conflicts can be seen in the conference program.

Consider what items might have been on the agenda. A forward- looking conference intended to help shape conservative responses to pressing national issues might have had sessions on how to address the sudden challenge to the international order, not to say the national interest, posed by Trump’s ascent.

It might have talked about how to preserve a world of open markets, and open societies, in the face of the populist- nationalist resurgence. It might have spent much time on the urgent problem of population aging, and the twin pressures — higher social costs, fewer workers to pay them — to which we will inevitably be exposed.

It might have discussed some approaches to t he problems of aboriginal Canadians that did not amount to simply giving more money and power to band councils. It might have focused on reforming our parliamentary and democratic procedures, or how to fix our broken mil- itary procurement system, or any number of other issues on which Canada would be well- served by a party presenting sensible conservative alternatives to the solutions on offer — or not — by the governing Liberals.

What, in fact, is on the agenda? There’s a session on Islamist extremism; another session on Islamist extremism; a session asking whether Trumpism can be exported to Canada, featuring a Trump campaign adviser; a session on how campus conservatives are being censored; another session on campus censorship; a session on the media; a session on the CBC (“Time to pull the plug?”).

It isn’t that these aren’t legitimate, even pressing issues in themselves — I’m hawkish on security myself, also hate political correctness, and have long called for the CBC to be defunded — or that the proposals under discussion are not valid.

But it cannot fail to be noticed that they are all pitched to a certain corner of the conservative tent, reflecting the particular obsessions of the populist right. Indeed, there’s also a session entitled “Down with the Elites? Understanding the rise in anti- establishment sentiment,” featuring inter alia that voice of introspection and understanding, Doug Ford.

Ford is not the only conference speaker with a decidedly populist tilt. There’s a Brexit campaigner, a talkradio host, the editor of the Toronto Sun, even a Rebel commentator or two, all capped by a session with the original bad- boy provocateur himself, Mark Steyn.

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with inviting any or even all of them — I’m friends with some — nor could a conference on conservatism in 2017 fail to pay some heed to the populist insurgence.

But the scale of it, the disproportionate emphasis, and the uncritical stance, is telling.

The Manning Conference may not have gone so far down the populist road as its U. S. counterpart, the American Conservative Union, whose own conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), is coincidentally on this week (it was the ACU that first invited Milo, then disinvited him in the storm over his latest norm- busting pose, on the blessings of pedophilia) but it is clearly less interested in resisting the populist wave than riding it.

But conservatism and populism make uneasy partners at best, and it is unclear what will be left of the former if the latter continues to go unchallenged.