Patrick Brown had to go

The four hours that ended just after 1 a.m. Thursday may go down as the most tumultuous in Ontario’s political history.

In that impossibly brief span of time, sexual misconduct allegations against Patrick Brown led to his humiliating resignation as leader of the Progressive Conservatives, left his shocked party in disarray and shredded earlier predictions for a likely PC victory in the provincial general election just four months away.

Suddenly, between late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, everything changed.

And everything had to, given the temper of our times and what Brown was accused of doing.

Two women had stepped forward alleging Brown had inappropriate sexual relations with them, when at least one of the women were in their teens, and Brown was a member of Parliament.

One woman says Brown met her at a bar and took her back to his Barrie home where he asked her to perform a sexual act.

At the time of the alleged incident, more than 10 years ago, she was in high school and too young to legally drink alcohol.

The second woman says Brown behaved inappropriately when she was a subordinate working in his constituency office in 2013.

She alleges that after she became drunk at a party, Brown put her down on a bed and lay on top of her. When she told him to stop, he did and drove her home.

Some people will say it’s premature to judge Brown. He faces no criminal charges. Nothing has been proven.

But such arguments are wrong. The allegations are extremely serious.

To be sure, Ontarians cannot know the truth of what happened or, indeed, if it will ever emerge. They can only hope the authorities will investigate further. Yet in the face of such uncertainty, Brown had to go. He could not lead his party into an election while on a daily basis responding to questions about his own, past conduct rather than his party’s platform.

This is 2018. We are in a new era, the #MeToo era, when powerful men in the worlds of politics, sports, the arts and entertainment are being brought low by accusations of sexual misconduct.

Not all allegations are followed by legal action and the light shed by a court of law. Yet they leave fairminded people free to decide, on the balance of probabilities, whose movie they would watch or what party they’d vote for.

The Progressive Conservative caucus deserves praise for immediately insisting that Brown step down after he vowed to stay on and fight.

But at the end of a sad, troubling week, their challenges have just begun. The PCs need a new leader — and perhaps they will consider asking Christine Elliott, a respected former MPP who finished second in the party’s 2015 leadership race, to take the job. They might need a new platform, too. And they have barely four months before election day, little time to do so much.

Ontarians yearning for a credible alternative to the Liberals, might have already written off one option.