Divided Conservatives a losing proposition

Erin O’Toole dodged a bullet last week in getting safely through his first postelection caucus. If history is any guide, the Conservative leader will soon need to duck many more.

Since the dawn of Confederation, Canadian conservatives can point to only three periods of undisputed political success, in government.: Sir John A. Macdonald, 18 years; Brian Mulroney, nine years; and Stephen Harper nearly 10 years.

Some would want to add Robert Borden, R.B. Bennett, and Dief to the list of successes, but the first almost split the country over conscription, Bennett badly bungled the Depression, and John Diefenbaker’s shambolic governing style squandered the largest political majority ever won.

While each of the top three Tory administrations achieved great political and some policy success, they each ended in massive defeats and serious risk of party meltdown.

Liberals are the standouts in managing leadership, party and government for nearly two-thirds of the years since Confederation. Why? For most of the period of Liberal success, one could argue that the values of Canadian conservatives were far closer to those of most English Canadian voters, and even to a substantial portion of Quebec.

Indeed, the Liberals were whispered about by their Tory opponents across Canada, as being in thrall to Quebec, the Catholic Church, and corrupt city bosses and business leaders both in Quebec, Ontario and Vancouver. The slurs were not entirely made up.

So, why have the Tories been such abject failures at winning majority power across Canada. The answer is being played out in front of our eyes again this week.

Unity!

The Conservatives are the sole Canadian political family that does not seem to understand the devastating cost of being seen to be a squabbling collection of bitterly opposed factions. The NDP and the Liberals have had their internal splits, but rarely. The essentiality of public party unity can be summed up in the streeter reporters have collected for generations, “Well, if she can’t even hold her own party together, why in God’s name would we put the future of Canada in her hands…?”

Curiously, having governed for much of Canada’s history by placing party unity and loyalty over principle and policy, as the iron law of Canadian Liberalism, the Liberal Party once fell into the blackhole of bloody and debilitating civil war, shortly after John Turner’s defeat by Mulroney. Their party-wrecking foolishness only died down after Paul Martin’s self-inflicted defeat a generation later.

The young party dons who coalesced around Justin Trudeau were a next generation to their feuding elders, determined not to fall back into their civil war. Wisely, they returned to the Liberal orthodoxy of their grandparents and made unity and loyalty the central pillar of their operating strategy.

Sadly, by the time of their near defeat two years ago, that conviction had once again been replaced by an iron fist at the centre, explosive defections, and the resurgence of an arrogant leadership style. That slide probably means that when Trudeau falls, the bloodshed will return. There are deep resentments in the caucus and the party base at their often cavalier treatment by PMO enforcers. We shall see.

The CCF and the New Democrats had two existential unity crises. One waged with Communists trying to take over local party organizations and drive their ideological stance into party policy. After years of bloody struggle, David Lewis was able to drive them from the temple.

The second crisis came with the Waffle in the ’70s and their cousins in the Trotskyite and pro-Marxian New Left organizations drawing on the vigour and support of their American cousins. David’s son Stephen engineered the second anti-infiltration attempt, again, not without bloodshed.

Each battle for party unity was won on one overarching wise precept and battle-hardened understanding, “Unity is for the party, and to the faith of our supporters, survival. Debate, dissent, heated battles are part of our DNA. Loyalty to the ideals and agenda of external political organizations is therefore forbidden.”

Next week, I’ll offer suggestions of how to build a better leadership selection contest, what policies are needed and which must go, and on that foundation how to build a more unified and electable political party.

Robin V. Sears was an NDP strategist for 20 years and later served as a communications adviser to businesses and governments on three continents. He is a freelance contributing