We don’t need another conservative party
There’s nothing novel about a bunch of politicos getting together at a bar to complain about their own party. Yet we’re supposed to think Scott Gilmore’s New Conservative movement is something different.
Last month, the Maclean’s columnist and card-carrying Tory announced he was embarking on a cross-country tour of Canada to talk to Conservatives about whether they want to reboot their party or even create a new one.
The first event is Monday in Halifax with the second one coming to Toronto on Tuesday. They’re sold out.
This all got underway in one of Gilmore’s recent columns headlined, “Confessions of a self-loathing Tory.” The gist of it is that the author is upset with the current crop of leadership candidates because they’re not progressive enough and the party is heading in the wrong direction.
It’s time, Gilmore writes, for “a conservative party that believes in equality for all regardless of race, creed, language, sexual orientation, or gender — a party that doesn’t see feminism as a left-wing plot, that doesn’t worry if we don’t share the same values, and is not frightened of everyone and everything.”
Really? I mean talk about cliche. If the Broadbent Institute held an essay writing contest at an Occupy rally asking attendees to describe the evils of conservatives, that’s approximately how the winning entry would read.
There’s little indication that this is a fair representation of the majority of Conservatives.
Yes, leadership candidate Brad Trost is unapologetic in his opposition to same-sex marriage. But guess what? Trost scored 0.11 per cent support in the latest Mainstreet Research poll of Conservative members.
Plus, front-runners Maxime Bernier and Kevin O’Leary are social liberals and so are Peter MacKay and Rona Ambrose, who were the original front-runners before it became clear they weren’t running.
Then there’s Kellie Leitch, who’s had the audacity to support Canadian values, which she defines as promoting women’s rights, gay rights and racial and ethnic diversity. The horror.
Oh yeah, and the previous government wanted women to momentarily lift their niqabs during the most important ceremony known to civil society. But that’s it.
It’s true that divisions remain among the rank and file, the stereotype being Bay Street economic conservatives rubbing shoulders with Alberta evangelicals. But this is going to happen in big-tent parties. Politics is about bridging divides.
The NDP has a similar problem, with urban social-justice warriors linked up with blue-collar union activists. Despite the odds, the left lives to fight another day.
Conspiracy theories abound as to Gilmore’s true motives, not the least of which concerns the fact he’s married to Liberal cabinet minister Catherine McKenna and thus this must be a Trudeau plot to destroy the Conservatives from within.
I doubt it. More likely, it’s just another case of an urban Tory who’s been watching too much CBC.
Gilmore promises to report back on what happened. My guess is it’ll be the same as right after the last election results, and the same as what will happen in Toronto next month at the leadership convention.
People will talk about ideas and about the future of a party that’s still very much intact and more or less in the political centre.
They’ll agree, they’ll disagree, someone will order another round, someone else will plot something resembling a coup, then they’ll all go home and carry on.
That’s healthy and commendable. And rather than being what unfurls the federal Conservatives, it’ll likely just make them stronger.