"The Control Freak Who Lost Control"

A "control freak who lost control." That is how the Observer's chief political correspondent sums up prime minister Theresa May who now finds herself neck deep in the quagmire known as Brexit.

The charge list against her is certainly a lengthy one. She triggered article 50 before her government had an agreed strategy for withdrawal and her senior team then wasted months squabbling with itself rather than advancing the negotiations with the EU. Ignoring advice to the contrary and without advance discussion with her cabinet, she made a prison for herself by laying down red lines that made the negotiations more difficult and set her up for a string of ignominious subsequent reversals. When she threw away her majority at an election she didn’t have to call, she carried on as if nothing had changed rather than trying to reach out to other parties to forge a broad consensus about a way forward. That made her the hostage of the Democratic Unionist party and the Brexit ultras on the right of her party. Mrs May has one quality that is of value in a political crisis. She has resilience. She lacks all the other ones, such as imagination, advocacy and agility.

True, all true, and yet not the whole truth. Any account of this nightmare that holds Mrs May solely culpable is not a complete explanation for how we got here. In a dark corner of what remains of its political brain, the Tory party knows that it is collectively guilty of driving the country it professes to love into this shaming mess. With a few prescient exceptions, the Conservatives all backed David Cameron when he promised a referendum on the cynical basis that he might not have to deliver it and with the arrogant assumption that, if he did have to, he would easily win it. Leading Tories fronted a Leave campaign that peddled fantasy promises that could never be realised. Since Mrs May came up with a deal that tried to reconcile withdrawal with realities, she has been repeatedly sabotaged by the political arsonists in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s gang. Her party has had several opportunities to remove Mrs May and it has always passed up the chance. This is not because there is any shortage of Tories who ache with ambition for the job; it is because no one has really wanted to take on the job while the Brexit torture endures. It has suited them all to keep Mrs May at Number 10 as their human sponge.

What about May's plan to bring her twice-rejected EU withdrawal agreement back for a "third time lucky" vote?

Incredible as it may seem, if Mrs May is defeated again, but gets closer to the winning post than before, we can’t be sure that she won’t go for a fourth attempt. 

That could require the EU to agree to an emergency summit at which its leaders would be asked to give her time to try. Here we must register the ingloriously ironic consequence of all these Westminster games, especially those played by the ultras. Their astonishing achievement has been to make the EU more powerful in our national affairs than it has ever been. A delay to Brexit is entirely in the EU’s gift and requires, as I noted last week, the unanimous consent of every one of its members. Each state, large or small, can say no or demand something in return for a yes. It is a fairly safe assumption that the EU will grant a British request for an extension because its leaders don’t want a calamity crash-out Brexit. But the EU gets to dictate not only whether a supplicant Britain is granted a postponement but for how long and on what terms and conditions.

Liberal Democracy Cannot Survive Undefended.

Since the advent of the neoliberal era, the reign of Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney, liberal democracy has been left to its own devices. The warning sign, the red flag, was the extinction of any meaningful vestige of progressivism from the body politic.

The last defender of liberal democracy we knew in Canada was Pierre Trudeau who bequeathed to us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that, coupled with a courageous Supreme Court, thwarted the worst undemocratic instincts of subsequent prime ministers notably Stephen Harper and even Justin Trudeau.

The decline of neoliberalism was marked by the evolution of a corporate media cartel, a wholesale shift in the balance between labour and capital, and the development of the corporate state whose leaders preferred to operate in the boardrooms rather than the livingrooms of the nation.

Harper may have dragged Canada's political centre far to the right but both the Liberals and the New Democrats followed complacently in his wake. The Liberals became 'conservative-lite' while the New Dems positioned themselves as 'latter-day liberals.' What Harper had wrought they chose not to undo. In the process the Liberal Party of Ignatieff and Justin Trudeau became untethered from the party of Laurier, St. Laurent, Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. The New Democrats of Layton and Mulcair strayed from the party of Douglas, Lewis and Broadbent. In so doing all three parties pulled the rug out from under liberal democracy.

Across the political spectrum, liberal democracy flourishes in a smallish band located at the centre, neither hard right nor hard left. Picture in your mind a circle. At the very top you have totalitarianism. At the very bottom you have liberal democracy. As you move from the bottom, whether to the right or left, liberal democracy is gradually displaced by authoritarianism of the sort we're seeing in today's emerging nationalist/populist movements. Today we're heading mainly to the right, a path that sees democracy steadily displaced by plutocracy and then oligarchy. Beyond that, well, we'll just have to wait and see.

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote of this movement in Europe and the United States. The article was titled, "Is the World Done with Liberal Democracy?" He makes the case that it is.

At the risk of inviting howls of scorn and derision, I mention today's column in The Globe by John Ibbitson, "Ontario has lost its political centre."

The political centre is collapsing in Ontario, polarizing between social democrats and populist conservatives. We thought it couldn’t happen here. It’s happening here. And it poses a grave threat to the Liberal Party, both provincially and federally.

No party has plans to balance the provincial budget, align new spending with available resources, seek practical, incremental change. For both parties, the centre is the enemy. 

Such a polarization between well-to-the-left and populist right challenges the electoral base of the federal Liberals. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be able to work with an NDP government, the PC’s plans to eliminate the carbon tax flies in the face of a core federal commitment to fight climate change.

Maybe a year and a half of Doug Ford would make Mr. Trudeau look good to Ontario voters. Or maybe things would become so toxic that polarization infects federal politics as well. 

Is the social democratic/populist conservative schism in Ontario permanent? That’s impossible to say. Had the PCs chosen a more conventional conservative as leader, had Ms. Wynne stepped aside when there was still a chance for the Liberals to renew the party, we might not be talking about schisms.

It seems odd to read Ibbitson lamenting developments that he and his kind have done so much to nurture and empower.

Here’s the big question: Would a Ford government enable the haters, even though he espouses no such hatred himself? Would the alt-right interpret a Premier Ford as carte blanche to demand an end to immigration, to target visible minorities, to proclaim that Ontario is Christian and white?

We’ll find out the answer if Mr. Ford wins. Ms. Horwath is determined to stop him. All we know for sure is that, at least in Ontario, at least for now, the centre no longer holds.

Ibbitson is beginning to sound much like the NYT's David Brooks' day-late laments about Donald Trump soiling of the Republican Party. A pox on them both.

Yet more disturbing is the notion of Justin Trudeau as the essential gatekeeper of liberal democracy in Canada. There's a huge difference between setting out to destroy liberal democracy and doing anything meaningful to defend it. Trudeau is no Stephen Harper but that doesn't mean that liberal democracy is safe in his hands.

My father planted in his young son's mind the reality that we didn't have a right or freedom that hadn't been paid for, often more than once, in blood. Over the years I came to understand that every right and freedom we hold has a greater value to those who might deprive us of it than we ever perceive it to be worth. Here we are.

Would a Fresh, Moderate Leader Give the Conservatives Their Majority?

The Canadian people have mumbled:  we don't trust Stephen Harper enough to give him a majority but we don't distrust him enough to return the Liberals to power either.

In a sense, weak Liberal leadership is the best thing Harper has going for him just as Stephen Harper's machinations keep the Liberals in the game.  It's a Mexican standoff.  But what if the Conservatives got smart and brought in a new gun, a moderate who could connect with the Canadian voter, someone in the mold of an old style "progressive" conservative?

My guess?  I'm pretty sure that'd be a slam dunk for the Tories.  They don't need to push a lot more buttons to get the five or six percentage swing needed to get into majority range.   God knows the Liberals haven't reached the disaffected vote and the Tories have certainly gotten in there before.  They know the way back.

I think the Canadian public is ready for a progressive conservative government - from the Tories, not the Liberals.  Iggy's journey into the centre-right really hasn't paid off for the party, has it?  C'mon, be realistic.  He may have no end of fine qualities and talents but, politically, he's a dud.

If Harper & Company open the door to a moderate successor I'd bet Liberal support will collapse.

When Leaders Lose Touch with Reality

It's becoming a recurring theme - top political leaders seriously out of touch with reality. They simply lack the courage to go beyond their established comfort zones and that translates into the enormous disaffection of the voting public with their political leadership.

What party able to wield political clout (sorry Greens) has anything remotely approaching an effective policy to combat global warming? Here's a hint: if they support the expansion of the Athabasca Tar Sands, their eco-chants are just so much greenwash. Imagine our own Canada refusing to become a leader in the fight to save mankind, our civilization and our planet from environmental catastrophe. It's positively mind boggling.

Across the pond, Britain's former chief scientist, Sir David King, has attacked politicians and industry experts for having "their heads in the sand" over the reality of declining oil supplies. From The Guardian:

...King said governments, including the UK's, were too eager to believe the optimistic predictions of economists who tell them that "oil will be squeezed out of the ground pretty much forever".

King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford.

He said: "That's what governments want to hear and that's what they do hear, and I think the British government as much as many others."

...He said oil demand would overtake production capacity as soon as 2015, which would drive up the price further.

...While transport is seen as the most difficult sector to decarbonise, action needs to be taken immediately to keep people and goods moving while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, he said.

"I can't overemphasise the importance of persuading governments to focus attention on what's going to be a very significant issue as we move into the next decade.

"It is down to government to steer us towards a defossilised economy using the regulatory and financial incentives available.

If you're not convinced Canada's political leadership is out of touch with reality, read Marsden's book, "Stupid to The Last Drop." It's a telling look at Alberta's looming environmental catastrophe at the hands of Big Oil and an indictment of the political leadership, provincial and federal, doing Big Oil's bidding. Once read, you'll be under no illusions about those who proclaim themselves fit to guide our country. Canada, like every other industrialized nation, needs to be working toward decarbonizing our economy and our society even as our political leadership reveal themselves to be devout Fossil Fuellers.

Andrew Coyne's Lament for the Late Conservative Party

It's something I've heard from some of my Conservative friends - a mix of anger, frustration and disappointment at what has become of their party under the leadership of Stephen Harper. But Andrew Coyne sums it up best in the latest MacLeans:

Think back to the late 1990s, and what the Reform party then stood for. Not just balanced budgets, but balanced budget laws. Referendums—on tax increases, on constitutional amendments, on citizens’ initiatives. Tight controls on spending. A flat tax. Abolition of corporate subsidies, and of their “regional development” dispensaries. Reform of employment insurance, of the Canada Pension Plan, of the CBC. A federation of equal provinces and citizens. An elected Senate. Free votes in Parliament. More power for ordinary MPs. Open nomination races at the riding level, free of interference by the leader’s office. Fixed election dates.

By the time Stockwell Day was running for prime minister in 2000—the Canadian Alliance having replaced the Reform party, and Day having replaced Preston Manning—a third or more of these were already gone. But the pace only quickened from there. By the time of the 2004 election, the newly formed Conservative party was still vaguely interested in abolishing corporate welfare, and still mentioned tax cuts. But mostly it was interested in telling you what it wouldn’t do: it wouldn’t cut spending, for instance, or much else that might upset someone, somewhere.

The party’s founding policy convention in 2005 took things still further: gone was any mention of referendums, for example. Spending cuts were out; subsidies were in. The courting of Quebec nationalists, which Harper had once warned against, had begun in earnest. Probably the delegates thought they were making a prudent set of concessions to reality, in a bid to establish themselves, once and for all, as a centrist party, ready to form a government. But in fact they were only softening things up for the next round. The accession to power, after so many years, did not mark the end of the party’s concessions. It merely provided it with the means to make still more, each more jaw-dropping than the last: on Quebec, on Afghanistan, on confidence votes, on foreign takeovers, on fixed election dates, on appointing senators, on corporate bailouts, until at last we arrived at last week’s establishment of a regional development agency for southern Ontario.

So they’ve given up everything they ever stood for, and what have they got in return? Pretty close to nada. They’re stalled in the polls, again. The fabled majority remains firmly out of reach. Those disposed to mistrust them are as suspicious as ever, while their own followers are now thoroughly demoralized. They have not moved to the centre; they have only succeeded in shifting the entire political spectrum to the left. The Quebec experiment, likewise, is in tatters, Quebec more nationalist than ever. The destruction is total. The failure is absolute.

Once, long ago, there was an answer: a new party. But you can only do that once: no one’s got the energy to climb that hill again. The harsh fact is that there is no longer anything resembling a conservative party in this country, nor any prospect of forming one. And conservatives have only themselves to blame.