Ford shows federal Tories how to do it
That now-familiar slogan of the pandemic — “we’re all in this together” — doesn’t seem to be exactly working for Conservatives in Canada. Two months of the COVID-19 crisis has polarized the big blue team into two camps in terms of relevance and public approval — the provincial Conservatives, who are seeing their stature grow, while federal Conservatives are struggling with a lacklustre leadership race and tin-ear political plays in Ottawa.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is a good-news story for Conservatives, widening his appeal even with non-Conservatives each week and proclaiming he’s “not in the mood” for partisan politics.
Meanwhile, the federal Conservatives seem to be locked in a conversation with their angry base, looking for ways to blame the Liberal government for the damage of the pandemic. Outgoing leader Andrew Scheer complains daily about Parliament not sitting enough, while leadership candidates such as Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole fire away at each other in the ghostly, virtual world of social media.
None of that looks like alltogetherness.
The pandemic problems for the federal Conservatives are driven home in some new polling from Abacus data, which shows Liberals surging ahead of federal Conservatives during this crisis in every part of the country except Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The Abacus results show Liberals at 39 per cent; Conservatives at 31 per cent. “At the beginning of March, the Liberals and Conservatives were within a point of each other,” the release stated.
What must be particularly disturbing to federal Conservatives is the way in which Justin Trudeau’s personal approval ratings have climbed to 47 per cent up from 32 per cent in March. Scheer languishes at 17 per cent and his negatives outweigh his positive ratings even in the blue heartlands of the West.
It’s even worse for MacKay and O’Toole, with positive ratings of 15 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively.
David Coletto, CEO of the polling firm, said the past two months have not been kind to federal Conservative fortunes and suggests they have themselves to blame.
“Canadians want leaders to work together and it seems the federal Conservatives haven’t got the memo,” Coletto said. “Seems to me that the federal Conservatives have done more to reinforce the negatives than try to find a new position. Canadians are looking for thoughtful leadership and alternatives, not outright negativity.”
Tim Powers is one of several veteran Conservative commentators who has been highly critical of the state of the federal party these days. “Disappointing” and “underwhelming” are the words he chooses.
“If there ever were a time for big ideas and some counterintuitive approaches to things, it would be now,” Powers says.
Ford is showing how it could be done, Powers says, by putting pragmatism above partisanship. Or, as Powers puts it, “Doug Ford has suddenly discovered that his popularity can actually increase if he governs like a normal person would expect you to govern.”
There may be a political science textbook in that observation.
Leaving conversations about political normality aside for now, it is very bad luck for the federal Conservatives to be having a leadership race in the middle of a national lockdown. It’s not just that it’s hard for any opposition party to be heard in the middle of a global crisis. It’s the way in which the world of politics, during this particular moment, has had to move almost exclusively online and away from the world of normal human contact.
The realm of online politics, let’s just say, is not where partisans of any stripe do their best work. Much of it looks like the washroom graffiti in the big open square of public debate, scrawled on the walls of social media to elicit laughs or anger, or both. Much of what is said in the ever-churning heat of the moment on Twitter would not be said in a face-to-face conversation.
So not only are the federal Conservative leadership candidates playing to the base, as is normal in a leadership race, but they’re being forced to play in the angry echo chamber online.
Nor can you build political support from the House of Commons, whether it’s sitting virtually or in person. Trudeau and Stephen Harper before him built their coalitions of support from outside the corridors of Parliament.
The steady beating of the drum for more political debates in Ottawa may give federal Conservatives something to talk about, but it’s not doing anything to get Canadians talking over their dinner tables at home.
Once upon a time, in another world, federal and provincial Conservative leaders stood together defiantly on the cover of Maclean’s magazine under the headline: “The Resistance.” That united, Conservative blue front has been fractured by the pandemic, and the current, prevailing view that partisanship is very resistible in a crisis.