Tories’ unease with Kenney could hand the NDP the next election

Conservatives seem intent on being a faction rather than a political party

The entry of Jason Kenney into the leadership race of the Alberta Conservatives highlights the often forgotten difference between a political faction and a political party. The addition of Donna Kennedy-Glans to the race may do so as well. We’ll see.

Factions keep things quiet and rule with plenty of winks and nods. In Federalist 10, James Madison famously described factions as citizens “adverse to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Those interests, he said, could be made explicit by arguments of principle, but factions seldom made them.

In contrast to factions and other conspiracies, Edmund Burke argued in 1770 that, in constitutional monarchies, parties had the task of organizing opinions and making them respectable. A party, he said, is a body of persons united “for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some principle on which they are all agreed.” Again, the operative word is “principle.”

Unlike factions, parties act on principle. They act on different principles, to be sure, but members of factions seek only to satisfy their personal ambitions and desires — usually money and power.

Competition, accordingly, is between or among parties. There can be no competition between a faction and a party.

This distinction, which stems from a time when parties first saw the light of day, remains valid. The proof of its validity was evident in the outcome of the 2015 provincial election, when a large and principle-free faction, comprised of the PCs and the Wildrose floor crosses, were crushed by the NDP. That, as Kenney has often said, is what makes the NDP an “accidental government.”

Since then, it is fair to say that neither Wildrose, nor the PCs, have been successful in articulating a respectable principle regarding which non-socialists might agree. This is Jason Kenney’s great opportunity.

Because partisan contentions are over principles, they are more than mere preferences. People with different preferences (rare or medium-rare?) are usually indifferent toward others’ preferences. Parties, however, want to prevail, to rule, to ensure that their rules are obeyed, even by their opponents. The NDP is not stupid and understands this very well.

This is why, fearing a successful Kenney leadership bid, they are trying to make it more difficult. This is why they proposed changes to party finance rules, which they justified as “getting money out of politics.” But as my friend Tom Flanagan pointed out elsewhere, it is really just gaming the system to their own advantage.

Kenney’s overriding principle is clear: “The Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties must put Alberta first.” This means “moving beyond those bruised egos” in the two parties and creating “a broad, tolerant, diverse, free-enterprise coalition.”

The interesting question right now is whether the bruised egos of the PC remnant will embrace conservative principles or not. The signs are mixed.

Thomas Lukaszuk, an Alison Redford-era cabinet minister, wants Kenney barred from running. Sandra Jansen, a sitting Tory MLA, remarked that Kenney “is clearly intent on dismantling the party,” by which she means the old PC faction. This is clearly true.

For Lukaszuk, Jansen, and a few senior party officials, who seem to be as afraid of Kenney as is the NDP, what Talleyrand said of the restored Bourbons clearly applies: they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Last election, the discredited PCs, having abandoned any connection to respectable principles, turned themselves into a faction, and gave us the NDP. Their hostility to Kenney puts them in the same position again.