Merge if you must, but that's not really the issue
Andrew Coyne
National Post
Saturday, October 18, 2003
It was, said Peter MacKay, "not only an agreement in principle, but a principled agreement." Well, sure it was. Mr. MacKay, the Progressive Conservative leader, had won the leadership of his party by promising, in writing, not to enter into any merger agreement with the Canadian Alliance. The Alliance leader, Stephen Harper, had won the leadership of his party by promising not to waste his time in merger talks with the Tories. The Alliance, he had vowed repeatedly, "is here to stay." Yet there they were, the two principled agreers, announcing the merger of their two parties. Perhaps he meant the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Ah, well. Times change, things happen, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. Such is politics. Still I wonder, now that the unite-the-right enthusiasts have had their way, how they will rationalize future defeats. The notion that the Liberals have been maintained in power only by the splitting of the right-of-centre vote has been a source of immense solace to conservatives, rather as the "Curse of the Bambino" has been to Boston Red Sox fans over the years: It's a happier explanation than mere incompetence. But now that, as it were, the dog has caught up with the car, conservatives may be forced to confront some hard electoral truths.
The truth is that vote-splitting has never been more than a minor factor in the right's inability to win elections. It is not a factor in the West, where the federal PCs have all but disappeared. It is not a factor in Atlantic Canada, where the Alliance has never made more than a token showing. It is not a factor in Quebec -- or rather, neither party is a factor in that province. Even in Ontario, the number of seats in which the combined vote of the two would have exceeded that of the winning Liberal candidate is scarcely two dozen. That's just arithmetic, of course: The number of seats in which either party's candidate would have won in the absence of the other could probably be counted on one hand, given the antagonism between their supporters.
If disunity was not the problem, then unity would hardly seem to be the solution. Or if it is important to unite the right, then the matter was settled long ago: There are precious few right-of-centre folks left in the federal PC party. There are precious few Progressive Conservatives of any description, but those that remain are largely split between the David Orchard insurgency, the Joe Clark personality cult, plus a few genetic Tories from Atlantic Canada. None of these groups could remotely be described as right of centre. So, logically, what is being united is not the right, as such, but the two federal parties that are not the Liberals or the NDP -- though if the Orchard-Clark faction can be provoked into leaving, it could count as a mopping up exercise.
Still, I don't want to discount altogether the importance of the irrational in politics. Having made such an issue of joining the two parties, having encouraged the public to see this as a test of their fitness to govern, conservatives could hardly afford not to follow through. It's certainly possible that a good number of voters were persuaded to vote for neither party until they "got their act together." And there's no denying the euphoria that the tentative merger has ignited among large sections of the right.
But, people, get a grip. Leave aside the enormous logistical difficulties to be overcome in the next six months, from fundraising to constituency organization to picking a leader, if the new party is to be up and running in time for an expected April election. Leave aside, too, the many irreconcilable differences between the two parties' platforms, from regional development to Quebec to direct democracy, that will somehow have to be papered over in the interim. Leave aside even the constitutional obstacles to ratification in either party, before all this frenzy of activity can even begin.
Assume all these practical problems can be solved. Is it really to be imagined, as some overheated commentators have predicted, that the Liberal hold on power is suddenly in jeopardy? Granted, Paul Martin may prove not to be the electoral juggernaut he was made out to be -- expectations are so high, however he performs can only be a disappointment. A resurgent NDP may start to eat into Liberal support on the left. Even so, a freshly minted Conservative Party will contest the next election with no organizational base of any kind in Quebec, scarcely more in Ontario, and an ideological pitch that, the more "moderate" it becomes, looks more and more like that of Mr. Martin. In which case, what reason are they giving voters to switch?
Much will depend, of course, on the choice of leader. But there is little sign of any obvious saviour. The most talked-about alternative to the two incumbents, Mike Harris, has no experience in federal politics, no ability to speak French, and an uncertain appeal, after seven turbulent years in power, even in his own province (though the disastrous tenure of Ernie Eves may have helped to rehabilitate him).
The real ingredients of political success are both less exciting and slower to take effect than the quick-fix some see in a merger. If they are ever to win power, conservatives -- and Conservatives -- have to do three things: 1) decide what they stand for; 2) recruit a competent, experienced front bench; and 3) figure out how to make these saleable to mainstream, urban Canadians. That was true before the merger. It is still true today.
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