Poilievre Takes the Canadian Conservative Leadership

 

The good news continues to build. Pierre Poilievre has won the Tory leadership with over 68% of the vote.

The talking heads on CBC of course insist that he cannot win an election. He has to “pivot to the centre,” and his positions have been too radical to do that.

But if he is going to pivot to the centre, what was the point in dropping Erin O’Toole? What was the point of electing O’Toole instead of McKay? What is the point of voting Conservative instead of Liberal? What is the point of even voting? Do we all just leave it to the entrenched elite and the deep state to carry on as they have always carried on, without any awkward disruptions? The particular politicians in power just put a smiley face on the same policies, deluding the people into thinking they have made a choice and have a say.

Pivoting to the centre is not just immoral. It is bad electoral advice for the right or those out of power. The need is to make your point. The need is to lead.

Poilievre seems to be a great communicator. That is the essence of all great leaders. That is the essence of Zelenskyy in the Ukraine today. That was the essence of Winston Churchill. That was the essence of Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. That is the essence of Donald Trump. Trump did not win by moving to the centre; he moved the centre to him. He reoriented the public agenda. If you cannot inspire, you cannot lead.

And another secret: you cannot be a great communicator if you have nothing to say. A great communicator must always have a message that sounds startling, new, radical. This was the tragedy of Boris Johnson. With magnificent pipes, after Brexit, he had no message.

Poilievre is a great speaker. He is great, like Thatcher and Reagan, perhaps better, at explaining economic concepts in clear terms. In his speech last night, there was the great illustration of ten loaves of bread, and ten dollars in the economy. Make that twenty dollars, and there are still only ten loaves of bread.

Yes, those he opposes say he sounds harsh. That’s how you always sound if you are winning the argument. To those who are losing, you are always going to seem worse than Hitler. As Harry Truman had it, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and to them it sounds like hell.”

Poilievre is also great at social media, like Trump, so that he can bypass the media gatekeepers. The lack of this talent has hindered Maxime Bernier.

It turns out his wife is also photogenic and great at giving a speech, at least based on her performance last night.

During CBC’s coverage, Chantal Hebert noted that Poilievre is more comfortable in French than any Conservative or PC leader since the later incarnation of Joe Clark. In the leadership vote, he carried every Quebec riding but six, running against a prominent native son. His wife is also fluent in French.

He necessarily has a united and energized party behind him. Nobody’s going to soon start an internal insurrection against someone who commands 68% of the party membership; it would be political suicide. And any party opposition to him is not united: 17% for Aitchison and Charest, on his left, and 14% for Lewis and Baber on his right. Either side would rather see Poilievre than the other.

I rather hope Trudeau is arrogant enough to call a snap election this fall or spring. This would follow the old Stephen Harper playbook of defining an opponent and taking him out before the public got to know him. So he and the Liberal operatives might think this clever.

I think it would be a grave misjudgment of the moment. The Conservatives are all fired up, and it feels like a movement—Poilievremania.