Rumours of Wynne’s end exaggerated
Sign of the times: Journalists get a heads up that the premier will address her MPPs at a normally closed caucus meeting the next day. Immediately, reflexively, every editor in town assumes it’s a resignation story, sending reporters into a feeding frenzy.
Proof, as ever, that people don’t pay attention to Queen’s Park.
Despite endless speculation from the opposition Progressive Conservatives that Kathleen Wynne would soon quit as premier — forced out by dismal ratings — it turns out that rumours of her death spiral are political spin. She is rising from the political dead at the very time that Ontario’s Tories are losing altitude.
Any death watch has a magical effect on the media, who love a moribund politician when they see one. A phalanx of cameras tracked Wynne on her supposed death march from the premier’s office to the government caucus room (112 steps according to my fitness tracker, though I counted it out for good measure) where Liberal loyalists awaited word on their collective future.
Now, with a provincial election campaign less than nine months away, time for an update: Wynne isn’t abandoning ship because, suddenly, it’s not necessarily sinking.
As photographers rushed into position to record her exit strategy, she offered a recovery strategy. Instead of a departure speech, a pep talk.
Not the end of the road but the beginning of the campaign trail as she tries out the beginnings of a stump speech. Leaving journalists without a news story — nothing to see here.
But we may all be missing the story.
Conventional wisdom long ago anointed the little-known Patrick Brown as premier-in-waiting. He came from out of nowhere — years of backbench obscurity in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — to capture the provincial leadership in 2015.
Today he remains a political unknown, because voters have no idea what his ideas are. With Brown vacillating on public policy, he is oscillating in public opinion polls.
It’s not that Wynne is invincible, he’s just invisible.
Groggily and angrily, voters are awakening and focusing — slowly. By all accounts this will be a change election, but the electorate has already shown a remarkable propensity to change its mind. What did Wynne have on her mind as she walked in, wired with a clipon mic, speaking without notes for a heart-to-heart with a nervous caucus? If it is to be a change election, then the premier will reposition herself as a change agent.
Changing economic times and financial uncertainty? Change is coming, and the government will grapple with it, she argued:
A $15 minimum wage. Free pharmacare up to age 25. Free tuition for many college kids. Smoothing out hydro rates. All of which are proving remarkably popular in recent polls.
Behind the pep talk was policy talk, and a promise to drive yet more change: “We can’t pretend that either we’re there, or when we finish implementing this plan we’ll be there. There is more to do.”
By contrast, the Tories are just politicians clinging to the past, who “think that if we could just go back, if we could just go back to the way it was . . .”
It’s an attempt to get out in front of the change train without being run over by it. And a recognition that her unprecedented unpopularity need not be politically fatal if the campaign can be framed as a contest of policies, not personalities.
Monthly polling by Campaign Research shows that two thirds of Ontarians believe the government should be changed. Even voters who think the government has done a good job are yearning for a change in power.
But in politics, as in life, the only certainty is uncertainty. Earlier polling by Campaign Research showed Brown’s Tories with a commanding 50-per-cent share of the vote last January, with the Liberals languishing at 28 per cent and the NDP at 15 per cent.
By May, Wynne’s Liberals had recovered the lead with 37 per cent, as the Tories tumbled to 34 per cent and the NDP recovered to 22. A summer sounding in July found the PCs at 38 per cent and the Liberals at 30, with the NDP parked at 24.
Given the 3 to 4-per-cent margin of error in their polling, that suggests a statistical tie between Liberals and Tories for the moment. All of which tells the tale of why there was no resignation story this month.
Wynne’s personal ratings are irredeemable yet irrelevant. It matters little that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath enjoys the highest personal support, given that her party attracts the least votes.
As for Brown, he can no longer depend on anonymity for popularity.
Which is why, when journalists watched Wynne walk into that caucus meeting the other day, they didn’t get a resignation story. Instead of walking away from the next election, the premier isn’t going anywhere just yet. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn