Ontario Politics Just Got Interesting
Jan. 25th, 2018 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidge The PC's in Ontario have a recent history of leaders making own goals (Tory with school funding, Hudak with policy positions far enough to the right to scare people) and they now have a spectacular one.
In the best of cases this situation - leaderless less than five months before an election - would be exceedingly difficult, even before you factor in any splash effect from the nature of the allegations. As it is, the policy aspects are at the level of vultures circling.
Brown, remember, was selected as an interloper from the federal Conservatives, perceived as being more populist and right-wing than Christine Elliott, the front-runner. Once he got into position he laid low for a long time and then, clearly deciding that Hudak's approach of continuing to hit one's head against an electorate well to the left of the PC base was a poor idea, pushed through a party policy document running distinctly to the Red Tory side. This alienated elements of the base, but except for those willing to throw votes away on the Trillium Party or the Family Coalition Party, they had a pig in a poke.
They don't have time to have a leadership campaign, thrash out a new policy, and run on it. The election campaign will begin on May 10.
They have two choices: run an abbreviated leadership selection process which gives nobody time to throw together coherent policy positions, throw out their prepared policies - and watch the Brown appointees who support those policies leave - in favour of whatever their new leader supports (exceedingly likely to be more right-wing), and try to wing it in the campaign; or they can run with the current policies, an interim leader, and a promise that the policies will bind the new permanent leader regardless of what policies that leader runs on, in effect straightjacketing the ensuing leadership campaign. Nobody is likely to believe that a new leader will want to carry on Brown's policies, given the nature of the base.
Neither is appealing. The first may not even be practicable: not only may a rushed campaign be logistically problematic, they risk displaying dirty laundry and the less appealing traits of the party right before an election is called. The second is a recipe for failure: the Liberals just have to run the election on policy and point out that the "real" PC policy is unknown, unknowable, and probably scary.
On the other side, given that the best description I can find for how progressives view Horwath is "with contempt", the Liberals may have been handed this election on a silver plate.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-25 12:45 pm (UTC)And since Wynne really is absolutely terrible on policy in a number of core respects, that might work. (Hydro selloff, abject failures of automation with respect to OHIP or even something like Presto.)
Horwath gives ever impression of Wanting to Form a Government, which is... bad. Wanting To Form A Government To Do These Things is not necessarily bad -- depends on the things -- but someone with a pure burning desire to be in charge is alarming.
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Date: 2018-01-25 01:42 pm (UTC)They will probably try, officially or unofficially: plenty of candidates will be lining up to throw mud. The problem is that this tends to rile up the base while doing little to persuade swing voters.
(The PC base loathed McGuinty as well, but we're never able to make it flow over to the populace enough to make a difference.)
A highly disciplined party might be able to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear: quickly focus on one candidate who's a) already running for a seat, b) charismatic, and c) genuinely willing to run and govern towards the middle. This is unlikely: they're more likely to end up with Doug Ford.
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Date: 2018-01-25 01:59 pm (UTC)The Ontario PC party is unabashedly right-wing; after Mike Harris (may the wasps find him sleeping), pretty much everyone has to admit that. And since what's going on with the cousins is outright ethnic cleansing for very little shift in rhetoric, and what's going on in Toronto under Tory is an obvious policy of actively encouraging the poor to die, it would take a lot of work to make the PC alternative not actively frightening to a majority of voters.
The other two parties are also actively terrible, but in different ways. So it's a really quite miserable choice as an Ontario voter.
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Date: 2018-01-29 06:04 pm (UTC)Not that I think he'll win. But it'll be a divisive race. The alternative, running under Fedeli with a leadership convention to follow the election, is equally bad, especially as it would now mean that the party would have to go back on an already announced race.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-29 10:52 pm (UTC)Might think there's a chance, dunno. Won't be the only authoritarian (or probable white-supremacist) running.