FOOTNOTES AND HISTORY — It has not even been two weeks since the Conservatives dispatched their leader. People moved on quickly — there is a lot going on — but we still wanted to know: How will history remember the tenure of ERIN O’TOOLE? For the answer, we turned to four Hill observers, each of whom has written at least one book about a Canadian prime minister. JOHN IVISON, author of Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister (2019): If history is kind to Erin O’Toole, he will be remembered as a NEIL KINNOCK-like figure — a reformer who moved the center of gravity of his party and made it more electable. (In former U.K. Labour leader Kinnock’s case, to the benefit of TONY BLAIR.) If it is less benevolent, O’Toole will enter footnotoriety as a cynical opportunist who portrayed himself as something he was not — a rock-ribbed, true blue Conservative — in order to win a leadership campaign before showing his true colors: a pinkish Tory, as leader. I have considerable sympathy with what he was trying to do as leader of the Opposition. He put up a creditable performance in the election campaign and stood on an imaginative platform. But at the end of the day, he was too reasonable to prosper in the era of the algorithm. There is no room for thoughtful nuance in today’s political climate, which instead rewards cartoonish posturing. SUSAN DELACOURT, author of Juggernaut: Paul Martin’s Campaign for Chrétien’s Crown (2003): Political legacies are measured by firsts. So Erin O’Toole will be the first leader ousted by his caucus under the Reform Act. If I was writing a book about his time in power, though, I’d probably tell the story of O’Toole as the pandemic caretaker of the Conservatives — elected leader during the strange time of Covid, the guy who tried to become prime minister in a pandemic election, broadcasting from his studio, and the man defeated by exhaustion with the pandemic. Given what continues to happen with the convoy protest and how it is polarizing the right, O’Toole may also come to be remembered as the last guy for a while who tried to lead a united Conservative party. PAUL WELLS, author of The Longer I'm Prime Minister (2014): Erin O'Toole! I think, to the extent he's remembered, it will be because he showed that you can't please everyone, and that in trying you may not please many people at all. He ran as one thing for the Conservative leadership and as nearly its opposite in the general election. He offered Quebec's government carte blanche, which pleased Quebec's premier but didn't move ordinary voters because it left the impression O'Toole had no bottom line. I think you need more edge in politics. AARON WHERRY, Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power (2019): O'Toole's time as leader is part of the larger story about the Conservative party trying to figure out what it should be and how it can win power again after 2015, but I suspect his legacy depends to a large extent on where the party goes next. If the party turns hard to the right, for instance, it might be fair to link that to O'Toole's own clumsy attempt to pivot to the center after selling the party on an edgier version of himself. In particular, if the party now moves backwards on climate policy, it'll be fair to ask whether his failure to make the case for carbon-pricing to his own supporters ultimately set the party back — if the party ends up deciding that O'Toole was right to push the party's climate policy forward, he might be remembered for helping it come to that realization. Of course, his political demise will also go down in the books for the use of the Reform Act, which could be a significant moment in the unending evolution of parliamentary democracy in Canada. CPC WATCH — TASHA KHEIRIDDIN has taken a leave from Navigator as she contemplates a run for leadership of the Conservatives. JEAN CHAREST is also said to be thinking about it. This column from CHANTAL HÉBERT helps explain why. — Unsolicited advice: SUPRIYA DWIVEDI writes in the Star that the Conservatives have a choice to make: “They can either be a serious party that tries to appeal to the average Canadian voter, or they can continue to be the party that dominates in sh*tposting, speaking only to the hardest elements of their base.” And here’s JOHN IVISON again: “Is there room in the Canadian political marketplace for a new centrist party that rejects the tribalism being embraced by the Liberals and Conservatives? I’m increasingly of the mind that there is.”
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