Doug Ford won’t resign, but he’s heading for huge defeat in 2022 election

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2021 (1943 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Washington Post publishes an opinion column calling for you to resign, you know you’re in big trouble.

It’s especially bad when you’re a foreign politician and you’re the target of the attack in one of the most influential newspapers in the world!

But that’s exactly what happened to Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Sunday when Post contributing columnist David Moscrop, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa, wrote a scathing piece on Ford’s bungled response to the pandemic in which he said Ford “was never fit to be premier” and that he “should catch the next train to political oblivion.”

Amazingly, by Monday the column topped the Post’s list of its most popular stories.

If anything, the Ford family hasn’t had this much international publicity — good or bad — since the days of the late Rob Ford’s wild and crazy days as mayor of Toronto.

Let’s be clear: Ford won’t quit.

But the chaos, flip-flops and incoherency displayed by Ford in the past week on the pandemic file has caused leading Conservatives to worry the party will lose the next election, which will be June 2, 2022.

Their fears are fuelled by Ford’s inept handling of the province’s pandemic response. In particular, they were stunned last Friday by his ban on outdoor playgrounds and his move to grant police sweeping powers to randomly stop people on the street. Ford reversed both decisions a few days later, but only after a huge public outcry.

“There’s a feeling it’s going off the rails and that Ford has clearly lost any connection with reality,” a veteran Conservative communication adviser, who has worked with both provincial and federal politicians, told me this week. “Ford says he’s listening to the scientists, but then doesn’t take their advice. Seems to be day-to-day decisions. Reaction after reaction, often too little, too late.

“Respectfully, I don’t think he’s that smart,” the adviser added. “He’s done — and so is his entire cabinet. There’s no coming back from this.”

Adding to Ford’s worries is the pile-on by columnist and editorial writers in media outlets that normally back the Conservatives. They write about “a leadership vacuum,” about “incredible failures,” “police-state tactics” and decisions that were just plain “nuts.”

It’s a stretch to believe Ford can recover from all this criticism and his recent blunders, given that he got off to a great start at the outset of the pandemic with his popularity riding high. Gee, even I wrote a column in March, 2020, saying he was doing a surprisingly good job.

Now he seems totally lost, lurching from one “plan” to the next, not just day to day, but almost hour to hour at times.

Indeed, Ford’s chances of winning re-election appear to be either fat or slim.

In a stunning reversal of fortune, several polls this month found the Liberals leading or tied with the Conservatives for the first time since the pandemic first emerged more than a year ago. The newest poll released Tuesday by Innovative Research Group put the Liberals at 35 per cent of decided voters, the Tories at 30 per cent and the NDP at 26 per cent.

At this stage Ford’s strategy for survival appears to be based on the belief that he still has time to right the Conservative ship and that a possible cabinet shuffle, more tax breaks and a faster vaccine ramp-up will fight off any further slide in his popularity.

For the past three years, Ford has portrayed himself as a strong, decisive leader — a can-do, take-no-prisoners’ guy who “fights for the little guy” and disdains “downtown elites” and others who disagree with his governing style.

But Ford’s ego-driven belief that this was the way to keep Conservative-leaning voters on board and win a second majority election has now given way to the real possibility that Ford will be a one-term premier.

While it would be wrong to underestimate Ford, “the next train to political oblivion” that Post columnist Moscrop suggested Ford should catch is pulling into the station.

Bob Hepburn is a Star politics columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @BobHepburn