Caucus management a delicate craft
During the 1981 bitter battle over the Charter of Rights, an NDP MP was accused of leaking a confidential set of amendments to a Liberal colleague on the committee. He narrowly escaped expulsion from a divided caucus.
When Brian Mulroney polled in the low teens, he regularly had breakfast with one of his malcontents at 24 Sussex Dr., then shared his limo with the star-dazzled member to the caucus meeting. Two seasoned full time advisers served as his caucus managers. He had no serious caucus rebellions in nine years.
By contrast, Stephen Harper’s approach to caucus management was closer to that of an army drill sergeant than a silky-smooth statesman. He suffered caucus defections, some of which might have been avoided if better intelligence gathering and stroking had been applied. Most famously, he lost Belinda Stronach in a hugely humiliating floor crossing.
Jean Chretien’s approach was a blend of active stroking by a series of capable lieutenants and heavy boots for the openly defiant. When John Nunziata voted against the government’s own GST tax legislation, he was promptly expelled. Last year, a Liberal MP confessed bitterly to a friend that he was not certain that the PM knew who he was.
Under this government, sensitivity to caucus management needs was reflected most Wednesdays when the prime minister often meandered about what he had done the previous week, what he was planning, and pronouncing on policy — while several members of his staff sat in prominent positions taking notes.
This government is still fighting a controversy that has cost them two ministers, an MP, the clerk of the privy council, and the prime minister’s most essential adviser. Angst over the disarray erupted in a very tense, sometimes hostile, caucus meeting last week. It is reported that senior staff have been assigned to do a better job of listening to grievances, sending and receiving messages from the centre to caucus and back. In the nine weeks of parliament left, it seems unlikely that this will do much for wobbly morale.
Again, last week, it is the mother of parliaments that offers the most gripping real-life reality TV about the strange combination of family politics and biker-gang-style turf wars that are the nature of every caucus.
The U.K’s delightfully irascible House Speaker John Bercow dealt a savage blow to the May government, forbidding them from a third whack at the same Brexit bill.
Theresa “one-note” May has nonetheless told EU leaders she will try again. A deeply frustrated EU gave her only 14 days to get it done.
Whether she is forbidden or defeated a third time — the only two likely prospects — caucus relations will be further roiled. Apart from the Peeping Tom delight in being allowed to spy on this tribal warfare, does any of it really matter?
Indeed, it does. A constantly fissiparous caucus leeches valuable resources from the job of governing. Treacherous caucus deal-makers can deliver some very poor policy — a Brexit referendum, for instance.
Consider how many files must be gathering dust on ministers’ desks due to LavScam management sucking all the resources at the centre. Consider the deep divisions among lifelong friends it has wrought. Then contemplate what a body blow is has been to morale and to planning a campaign only weeks away from soft launch.
There are not many domains about which one could say with confidence that a Prime Minister Scheer would outperform the incumbent. As a cautious and thoughtful former speaker, the care and feeding of his backbench is almost certainly one of them.
Nightlong desk banging may seem to opponents and Canadians as childish. But such kamikaze parliamentary campaigns can forge deep bonds among the veterans of the battles shared. Even if Tory disruptions fade by next week, the difference in morale between the two caucuses could not be more stark as they approach the campaign starting line.