Will MacKay ditch Harper for Nova Scotia job?

Is Peter MacKay about to finish what Belinda Stronach started? When she switched to the Liberals, Stronach cut the legs from under Stephen Harper last spring. Now, it is MacKay’s turn to be in a position to pull the rug from under the feet of the Conservative leader.

In the wake of the resignation last week of Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm, there is a possibility that MacKay could exit federal politics to seek the provincial leadership of his party. If he did, he would be taking with him what little pre- election momentum the federal Conservatives have managed to hang onto. The first visible casualty would be the already wounded Harper. But in the longer term, MacKay would also put at risk the future of the fractious federal party he co- founded. MacKay has been a burr under Harper’s saddle ever since the latter became leader of the new Conservative party.

In more ways than one, he has become to Harper what Paul Martin was to Jean Chrétien: a pretender to the throne who too often cuts a swath that is larger than that of his leader.

Chrétien put up with Martin for years because he truly had no other option. If anything, Harper has even more of a need to hang on to MacKay. Until after the next election, it is a matter of personal survival. The Conservative leader is one election bullet away from becoming the “ dead man walking” of federal politics. For Harper, the next campaign is a make- or- break one.

If he loses, his federal career will be over. And if he does not manage to at least keep the Liberals down to a minority, he will go down in history as a failed leader. The Tories who joined the new party at the time of the merger have grown increasingly restless under Harper’s leadership. Last spring, many of them privately blamed Harper for having made it easy for Stronach to walk out the door. They claimed he needlessly antagonized her. When she left, she took away much of the thin Tory patina that the merger had brought to the former Canadian Alliance. MacKay’s exit would strip the party bare.

That would pave the way for a bitter and potentially fatal post- election showdown between the two factions who cohabit so uneasily under the Conservative roof. While the Tory clan would insist on replacing Harper with one of its own, the Reform- Alliance grassroots would undoubtedly feel that it was Stronach and MacKay, the two most prominent Progressive Conservative figures associated with the merger, who poisoned the election well of the new party.

It is not every federal politician who succumbs to the siren calls of provincial politics and the alluring prospect of becoming a premier.

Last Spring, Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe turned down pressing invitations to seek the leadership of the Parti Québécois, in part because a federal election is imminent.

If he had not been pushed into the Quebec arena in 1998, Jean Charest might well have chosen to stay put as leader of the federal Conservative party. But Duceppe and Charest both pondered their future from a federal leadership position. By comparison, it is far from obvious that MacKay will get a second shot at leading a federal party.

There are those who would argue that by going to Nova Scotia, MacKay would ultimately enhance his federal prospects. The opposite is more likely to be true. Many diehard Tories already see MacKay as the man who broke his word and sold out the federal Progressive Conservative party to the Canadian Alliance. By leaving the new party on the eve of an election, he would risk being perceived as having added yet another betrayal to his federal record. Chantal Hébert’s national affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. chebert@thestar.ca.