Why Bernier’s crazy leap?
With few obvious plans or followers, what can he gain?
NEW PARTIES GENERALLY ARISE OUT OF SOME CRISIS.
No one with any familiarity with the modern Conservative party could disagree with much of what its former-almost-leader Maxime Bernier now has to say about it.
“Intellectually and morally corrupt” might be a bit over the top, but “avoids important but controversial issues”, “afraid to articulate any coherent policy”, offers “a bunch of platitudes that don’t offend anybody but don’t mean anything [or] motivate anyone” while pandering to interest groups and buying votes “just like the Liberals”? Checks out, as many Conservatives would be the first to say.
Neither is there anything objectionable in principle about Bernier’s proposal to launch a new party of the right. Obviously it would not be in the partisan interest of the Conservative party, but whether it would be harmful to the broader cause of conservatism, as so many reflexively insist, is less clear.
As I’ve argued before, the splitting of the left-of-centre vote between two (later three, and four) parties since 1935 has not stopped the Liberals from winning 16 out of 25 elections in that time. It may even have helped. The presence of two parties saying broadly similar things has entrenched progressivism as the default mode of Canadian politics, leaving the Conservatives, to the extent they have occasionally demurred, looking like the outliers.
Rather than simply splitting a fixed percentage of the vote, that is, the two parties may have combined to expand the pool of voters from which they both fish. An upstart conservative party, more robust in its advocacy, might play the same role as the NDP on the left, pushing out the boundaries of acceptable opinion and freeing the established Conservative party to compete more aggressively for the median voter — in part by pulling the median to the right. If nothing else it would restore some balance to the equation.
But to say that a new conservative party might be a useful addition to the political landscape is not to say that this is that party, or that now is the time, or that Bernier is its leader.
New parties generally arise out of some crisis, born of a compelling and broadly-supported philosophy, project or objective — the independence of Quebec, the West’s rightful place in Confederation, building the New Jerusalem, saving the planet — that can no longer be denied. Perhaps creating a more authentic voice for Canadian conservatism is a cause of the same urgency, but it is not clear the Conservative party is constitu- tionally incapable of being that voice, or if so, why Bernier should have only concluded that now.
Most of the criticisms Bernier makes of the Conservative party “under its current leadership,” while valid, could have been made at any time in the 14 years since its founding. At the same time, that Bernier himself came within an ace of winning the leadership little more than a year ago hardly bespeaks a party that is impervious to change; it suggests, rather, a substantial proportion of party members were so eager for change they were willing to take a flyer on a candidate whose last significant political achievement was being fired as foreign minister.
Certainly it would be hard to claim the situation has suddenly become irretrievably worse since then; uninspiring as Andrew Scheer’s leadership may be, the party is noticeably less controlled, more open to internal debate than under his predecessor. Absent a more convincing rationale, absent supporters, money, candidates, platform or a plan, the whole thing looks suspiciously like a personal vanity project.
Unfair! a Bernier supporter might say. He’s only just announced it! That is, a Bernier supporter might say that, were there evidence that he has any. It would be one thing if a sizable number of party stalwarts were following him out the door. None has so far materialized. Discontent with the party’s leadership and direc- tion there may be, but not so much that many partisan Tories are likely to abandon the party altogether.
Individuals matter in politics, and there are examples in history of individuals of such stature as to produce a political movement, as it were, from their own brow: Peel, de Gaulle or, somewhat more preposterously, Lucien Bouchard. Needless to say, Bernier is not among their number.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps le Parti Max will take off, if not on the strength of his persona than on the strength, as he says, of his ideas: bold, radical ideas, the kind that excite attention and attract support. It is true that no constituent part of the Conservative coalition has been particularly well served since the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance (successor to Reform) parties merged: not the social conservatives, not the libertarians, not the Trumpian populists whom Bernier has lately begun to court. Perhaps a new coalition could be assembled from these bits of flotsam.
But if so Bernier would find himself in a new dilemma. As a one-man party he is free to put forward whatever proposals he likes. At the head of a real party, he would have to accommodate others, some with views contrary to his, some contradicting each other. Just how easily would socons and libertarians, free traders and anti-globalists, especially of the pur et dur kind susceptible to Bernier’s no-compromises appeal, sit together in the same party? Might they find themselves forced to make the same sorts of awkward saw-offs and agreements-to-disagree as the Conservatives?
It’s not even clear what this does for Bernier. The standard script for a defeated but still potent leadership candidate, if he cannot or will not be accommodated within, is a dignified exit, a couple of years in private life making money and conspiring, then a triumphant return once the other guy falls on his face — as Scheer still has every chance of doing in 2019.
So why this crazy leap in the dark? Or does Bernier think Scheer will win?