Some Post-Election Thoughts

Some post-election thoughts and clarifications, plus some musings on needing to think more clearly about conservatism as a philosophy of government and not just as a philosophy of opposition

I’ve decided to do a write up of my initial post-election thoughts. This is a somewhat scattered essay. I wasn’t planning on doing this initially, and I’m not doing a post-mortem of the election itself and what went wrong for the Conservatives. I want to offer some thoughts and observations about conservatism more broadly and what this election says about the challenges Canadian conservatism faces. This isn’t a deep “what is conservatism?” essay. I’ve written stuff like this already and I think people generally know what my broad vision of conservatism looks like by now. 

This newsletter is in part a response to some conversations I’ve had this past week and some of the responses I’ve had to a column I wrote for the National Post. The column was titled “Tories need to figure out how to win as conservatives” and was written as analysis of why parts of the base are angry with O’Toole. It was less about me specifically saying what I think (which I’m going to do here now anyways), but it definitely got interpreted by some as that. People interpreted this as me joining the “O’Toole needs to go” camp, and some of these people were later surprised and unhappy when I tweeted that I think O’Toole should stay on as leader. 

The concluding paragraph in particular appears to have been interpreted as a rebuke of O’Toole, and I noticed it was being used by some who seem ready to challenge O’Toole: 

“A Conservative party that isn’t conservative is pointless, but so is a Conservative party that can’t form governments. It sounds obvious to say it, but in the inevitable soul-searching and postmortem that takes place, what Conservatives need to figure out is how to thread this needle: not just how to win, but how to win as Conservatives.”

I stand by this statement and I will return to this idea of conservatism as a governing philosophy, as opposed to a philosophy of opposition later on. But I can see how some interpreted this the way they did, and why these people were then surprised I said he should stay on as leader. 

I don’t want to spend long on this point because I find this kind of Conservative infighting (the tory syndrome), which is often about a combination of both ideology mixed in with personal feuds and rivalries, extremely frustrating. I think O’Toole deserves a second shot for a few reasons. I thought there was a lot to like in the platform, because O’Toole himself performed fairly well during the campaign for the most part, and the Conservatives are on the path to form government. I also think another leadership election is a bad idea and this habit of dumping leaders after single election results is extremely shortsighted. Changes are needed, but I don’t think replacing O’Toole is one of them. 

Before some of you send furious responses about how I’ve “sold out” or how O’Toole sold out and therefore needs to go, I absolutely do think that portions of the base have every right to be angry. As I wrote in the Post column, what has angered many is not simply the campaign O’Toole ran, it was that he won the leadership running as a “true blue” and then pivoted to something else. 

The Conservative Party is not a party of one. O’Toole needs to show some humility and work to rebuild some trust with these parts of the base (and caucus) who are upset and angry over this. The Conservative Party is very much a coalition of different groups who disagree on all sorts of things. Keeping these groups together is a delicate and at times challenging task. I’m not going to pretend to have any insights or expertise on caucus management and relations, but my suggestion would be that the best short term step on this front would be for the caucus to adopt all four measures of the Reform Act when they meet to vote on this in early October. 

The Conservative caucus is full of talent, and while valuable voices were lost in the election new talent was added as well. A more involved caucus is better for the party and (more importantly) for the proper functioning of parliament as a whole because it keeps the leader more closely connected to the caucus they lead. Plus there is plenty of talent on the front and backbenches of the caucus, and it would be silly not to take advantage of it. 

One of the implicit points I tried to make in my Post column was that problems both internally and in the general election stem from the leadership election. O’Toole would not have won had he not run as the “true blue.” But the nature of leadership elections where you have to run to the right and gain the support of various groups is that it meant that both the Liberals were able to run against the true blue Erin in the election and plant doubt in voters minds as to whether O’Toole was authentic and trustworthy, while at the same time angering the portions of the base who thought he was this true blue character. 

Rebuilding Trust

Opposition comes from various groups. But where these different factions within the party, from the fiscal hawks to the social conservatives to the western prairie populists, are in broad agreement is their opposition to a perceived push to a more centrist vision for the party. I don’t fully agree with this characterization because while some of the changes were undoubtedly about moving towards the centre, I don’t think some of these changes should be understood as becoming centrist or liberal-lite. I was extremely positive in a pervious newsletter about the “blue collar conservatism” that I thought captured much of the platform and I totally stand by this assessment and want to see the party build on it. This isn’t about just moving to the middle it’s about recognizing broader political changes that are afoot and adapting. This is not so much an innovation but a recovery of older vision of Canadian conservatism and I see this as a good thing.

But again, I understand why people are mad and I sympathize with some, though not all of them. What bridge building looks like with all these different groups I don’t know and that isn’t for me to figure out, but one place I do have some suggestions is with social conservatives. Some social conservatives won’t be satisfied until O’Toole is gone, but this was definitely something I felt needed improvement from the campaign and where I do think there is an opportunity. For once, social conservatives cannot be used as the scapegoat for a Conservative electoral defeat, and that I think presents an opportunity to have a constructive discussion about the role and place for social conservatives within the party. 

I would point readers back to a newsletter from earlier this year that I wrote on social conservatism for my full thoughts on this. Whether some people like it or not, social conservatives are an integral part of the Conservative coalition, and the party cannot simply ignore or exclude them. But as I said in that newsletter, I generally dislike the socon label because it has become applied to some hot button issues which neglects some of the more foundational aspects of conservatism and why a concern for the “social” is integral to conservatism. 

Alongside the shift towards a more pro-worker conservatism, the next part of this new conservative agenda that could be developed is a renewed social conservative agenda that takes an aggressive approach to things like family and child policy and makes this an explicit and central part of its message. I realize I’m sidestepping the question of what to do about these hot button issues, and let me just say on that front that I stand by my claim from that previous newsletter that “it isn’t clear to me that having pro-lifers and other socons within the fold is quite the “albatross” that some claim it is, and if social conservatives were to completely abandon the Conservative Party then putting together a winning coalition would undoubtedly become even harder.”

My broader point here is simply that there is room for a positive and expanded social conservative agenda alongside the blue collar conservatism of the platform. This, along with a more explicit cultural conservative messaging by becoming the party of patriotism and the flag, territory the Liberals and progressive left are rapidly vacating, would fully bring about the realignment shift I’ve discussed at length in The Dominion. 

Anyways, to summarize where I stand on this, and I have no plans of getting dragged into this too much - there needs to be some efforts on behalf of O’Toole to restore some trust with the various factions within the party that are unhappy, but I think overall some of the shifts that are being made are worthwhile ones. It would improve the discourse on conservatism in Canada if we moved beyond the red versus blue tory, liberal lite versus true blue framing that serves us poorly. While we need to wait for a full post-mortem and analysis of the results, there also seem to me to have been some positive signs that this realignment/blue collar shift can work. Matt Gurney interviewed an anonymous senior campaign official after the election for TVO, and something the official said intrigued me: 

Gurney: Whoa, hang on. That sounds like something we just shouldn’t blow past! What was the old Conservative coalition, and what happened to it?

Conservative: [Laughs] Okay, obviously it varies by place, but think of it this way: our three legs were big business and corporate, rural and farmers, and a swing component. That third one was tricky. Mulroney brought the Quebec nationalists. Harper, we got them with ethno-community suburban outreach. But I think the Liberals are beating us on big business, and we need to accept that and pivot to small business, working-class, things like that. We just started doing that, and it’s already working. We did shockingly well in Hamilton. And look at northern Ontario. These places are in play for us now. Northern Ontario is going to get very interesting. But if I’m being honest, the question of who the new Canadian Conservative voter isn’t one we’ve fully answered yet. We’re winning the popular vote, but we still need to grow, and I think that needs more time.

I went and did some digging myself and what this anonymous official is saying here appears to check out, and if you combine this with the gains made in Atlantic Canada I think there are real reasons for optimism on this front. This election could be comparable to what happened with the Conservatives in 2017 in the UK, but in a positive way. Hear me out here. In that election Theresa May came close, but just fell short, on breakthroughs across the board that would have fully inaugurated her as the champion of this realignment conservatism. While it didn’t materialize in 2017, it did in 2019. The progress is there, and I really think Conservatives should give this another shot next chance they get, it really could pay off. The party needs to break through in suburban seats, and I think this “thoughtful populism” as John Ibbitson described it can absolutely do that in the next election.

A philosophy of government or opposition?

But the bigger point I want to make here and that I implied in that quote from the Post column is that there is more to the Conservative Party than just representing some pure kind of conservatism in perpetual opposition. To quote again; “A Conservative party that isn’t conservative is pointless, but so is a Conservative party that can’t form governments.” The Conservative Party may be a coalition, but it does not exist simply to represent a variety of groups in opposition. It was formed in 2003 to ultimately be a governing party. 

People like me love to discuss and debate what conservatism means and the deeper philosophical basis of conservatism. I’m a political theorist by training, this is what I do. But those of us who think about conservatism need to take our own principles seriously, and part of what I think that means is having a certain sense of realism both about human experience and political life. So while it’s fun and worthwhile to have these kinds of philosophical discussion about conservatism, one thing I think we need to do more of is think about conservatism not just as a political philosophy, but as a governing philosophy. What is the point and purpose of conservative governance? 

Conservatism right now is too often a philosophy of opposition as opposed to a philosophy of government. Conservatives know what they oppose, but often it’s much harder to figure out exactly what Conservatives are for. I don’t think this was always the case, in fact I think it’s a recent development spurred by the changing political landscape. I’m not saying this is how voters think about these sorts of things, but a decade ago there was a clear answer to the question of “what’s the point of a Conservative government?” The answer was something to do with fiscal and economic management. You could associate conservatism with government precisely because they owned this issue, but as the fiscal and monetary landscape has changed fiscal prudence and budgetary restraint have become less politically potent (which is a bad thing, for the record, and sooner or later I expect an appetite for this will come back), and Conservative parties can no longer just lean on his as their primary claim to government. I don’t think we’ve quite come up with a new answer just yet. 

This doesn’t mean Conservatives in Canada can’t win elections, looking at the provincial landscape is the proof against that. And my point here isn’t about narrow partisan considerations, it’s about a deeper conversation and process I’m hoping to get you thinking about. Too often I think the way conservatives in Canada think about this is “here are some things we promised in our platform and the job of our government is to fulfil these promises.” This is definitely part of it, but this isn’t a philosophy of government. 

Government isn’t just about implementing platform promises, it’s about overseeing public administration and actually governing, which means responding to problems and challenges as they arise. This is often mundane work, but it also normally involves dealing with unexpected challenges and problems. This is statecraft. And this is where having firm principles and a clear understanding of bedrock principles is crucial to good conservative government. If you want conservative government, you need to be able to adapt and apply these principles to challenges as they arise. 

Meaningful governments able to actually offer a substantive answer as to why they are in government will not just be ones with good policy platforms. They will be well run and efficient machines that understand how to administer and oversee modern bureaucratic states and how to get things done within modern political constraints. They will also at the same time have a firm grasp of their basic principles and constantly be applying them as they go instead of just isolating the political principles to specific policy prescriptions and then treating the rest of the business of government as just steering a ship set on course by other parties and factions. 

The pandemic has unfortunately exposed why I think this is an area we need to improve. Every government had to throw out its plans and adjust on the fly to the pressures and strain the pandemic has put on them, and if we think about government as merely implementing platform promises this is precisely the kind of thing where we will be exposed as ill equipped to steer the ship of state. Responding to the pandemic requires flexibility and adapting on the fly to changing realities on the ground, but at times I think it would be hard to deny that various Conservative governments have looked ill equipped and unprepared for this task, often not adapting quickly enough or not having any kind of idea of the bigger picture and long term planning. This is not an exclusively conservative problem, but this is where I think you can see the subtle claim I’m making about a conservatism of opposition versus a conservatism of government. The nimbleness that a governing philosophy requires will mean abandoning political principles if we don’t have a clear grasp of those principles which enables us to apply them to problems and challenges as they arise, which is precisely why we need to think clearly and coherently about what conservative government means. 

I was thinking about this recently while I was working on a mock mandate letter for Canadian Heritage that The Hub is doing as part of a broader series. Have a go at writing a mandate letter as a kind of mock governing exercise. I found that it gets you thinking about things in a way that’s quite different from just trying to come up with policy prescriptions in a vacuum.

This also makes you think about politics a little bit differently. Conservative parties are pointless if they don’t govern, and Conservative governments are useless if they aren’t able to govern as conservatives. Conservatism in Canada is a coalition and a kind of family as opposed to a unitary philosophy, but we still need to think clearly about what these foundational principles are and how to make sure we have governments headed and staffed by people who understand this too so that when Conservatives govern they aren’t pointless or rudderless exercises. 

To wrap up, this has been a somewhat scattered newsletter and it was more a way for me to flesh out some various things I’ve been musing on recently and I hope you find them useful.