Erin O’Toole, a true “Blue Conservative” ready to challenge Trudeau and rule Canada

28 August 20204 years ago babelfish

And finally came the (relative) surprise. Underdog Erin O'Toole was elected to lead the Canadian Conservative Party, defeating a longtime politician like Peter MacKay.

O'Toole's victory is an outcome few would have expected earlier this year. Peter MacKay had strategically presented his candidacy just after big favorite Rona Ambrose had given up racing and the general perception was that his path to leadership, in the absence of other heavy candidates, would be free of particular obstacles.

It is no coincidence that MacKay strongly opposed the decision to postpone the election due to the pandemic in the spring. For him it was a game to be closed quickly. The extension of the campaign due to Covid , however, gave the other candidates time to grow and Erin O'Toole to present herself as a serious contender for the leadership of the party.

Less "expert" and "institutional" than MacKay, but precisely for this reason more "fresh", closer to the militant momentum of the base and more reliable for the Canadian West that feels forgotten by Ottawa. O'Toole has always claimed in his speeches to be the only true “Blue Conservative” , which in the Canadian political lexicon basically means “fiscal conservative” – as opposed to the more centrist and statist “Red Tories” . Not all commentators agree that it is fully, but the enthusiasm with which this definition was made throughout the campaign paid off in the end.

Erin O'Toole's ability was to have built, in a few months, in her support a "catch-all" coalition capable of representing the most traditionally conservative areas of the country, as well as being able to present itself in a competitive way in contexts more cosmopolitan and sensitive to social innovation.

The election of the leader took place with an "Australian" system. Each elector placed the four candidates in order according to their preferences. If, after the first round, no candidate had obtained an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest first preferences was eliminated. At that point the second preferences of the voters who had voted him were redistributed to the other candidates. The same logic followed in the second round, leaving only two candidates on the field.

That a win for O'Toole was envisioned was pretty obvious from the first round. It was widely believed, in fact, that the consensus of the two candidates of the social-conservative wing (Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan), if eliminated, would have poured in the majority on him, rather than on the centrist MacKay. Peter MacKay, therefore, needed to reach the end of the first round with a clear advantage, to sleep peacefully. After the count, however, MacKay was actually in the lead, with 33.5 percent, but O'Toole, second, was on the sidelines, while Lesly Lewis, third, was far beyond expectations. In the second round, with Sloan's redistribution of votes, O'Toole went marginally ahead of MacKay, while Lewis, who benefited from most of the second votes of Sloan's supporters, ended up barely out of the picture. At this point, the final ballot, with the redistribution of the votes of Leslyn Lewis, crowned O'Toole with 57 percent.

Erin O'Toole, in her acceptance speech, reaffirmed a vision of the Conservative Party as a "party of ideas and principles" and of a "strong prosperous and more united" Canada. He immediately wanted to point out that his Conservative Party is for everyone, a party-country in which everyone has the opportunity to recognize themselves, regardless of their origin and their past path. It will be the party "for those who work hard and work hard for their families", for those who do not want an economy "only for insiders " and for those who are proud of what Canada produces economically and culturally.

O'Toole, in his speech, paid particular attention to Québec, arguing that the province will have a seat at the decision-making table and even that Québec nationalists will have an important place in the Conservative Party. In the short term, it may be a way of wooing the Québecois Bloc to vote no confidence in Trudeau's minority government. In a broader view it may be the attempt to rebuild that grand coalition with Québec nationalism which, in the 1980s, had made Brian Mulroney's fortunes.

During the evening, the farewell speech by outgoing leader Andrew Scheer was particularly incisive. To him the task of appealing to pride and conservative values and he has fulfilled it by using high and crystalline “Thatcherian” words.

For Scheer, the Liberal Party only proposes more state interventionism and less individual freedom, and by doing so it helps not the weakest, but those who can afford greater relational skills with power, while the "unprotected" are the first to lose their jobs. Conservatives, on the other hand, will always be anchored to some key principles: freedom, free market, "limited government" and the unlimited potential of individuals. According to Scheer, it can be a temptation for everyone to use the state "for good", for something that is shared, but inviting the state to an active role means laying the foundations to justify any invasion of the field by the policy; this is why it is essential to keep the state within strictly defined borders and to leave society free to play its role.

"We want free people, in a free market, who work hard and can enjoy the fruits of their work, free to express themselves and live their lives as they want."

In the end, the Tory leadership race gave much more than expected at the start. Despite the small number of candidates, compared to 2017, and the fact that the campaign was largely overshadowed by the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, in the end the conservative people responded with record levels of membership and funding.

Moreover, the new leader takes the reins at a very propitious moment, given that Justin Trudeau, following the recent family scandal linked to the WE foundation, has seen in a short time all the advantage that the management of Covid had brought him to evaporate. .

Early elections are a possible possibility and at this point the Conservatives would be ready to face them. O'Toole may, in fact, represent a breakthrough leadership for the Canadian Tories.

Freelance economist, advocate of Western culture, very open on civil rights, and friend of Israel, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the new Conservative leader is culturally equipped to make good politics. And the feeling is that he is also well equipped to beat Trudeau, including in the field of empathy and communication, which were certainly not strong points of outgoing leader Andrew Scheer. In short, if Trudeau's position is further cracked up to determine a return to the polls, this time the Conservatives may be in the right position to take Ottawa and bring to the government the ideas of a "classical liberal" right of which these days – not only in Canada – there is so much need.

The post Erin O'Toole, true “Blue Conservative” ready to challenge Trudeau and rule Canada appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/erin-otoole-vero-blue-conservative-pronto-a-sfidare-trudeau-e-governare-il-canada/ on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 03:58:00 +0000.