Not the end of the world for PCs

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/10/2023 (721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since the results of last week’s provincial election rolled in, we’ve seen two near consensuses develop among our province’s chattering class about the nature and consequences of the PC loss. I disagree with the first and am doubtful about the second.

First, some commentators have dramatically opined on how the PCs were “destroyed” in the election and how their policies were completely repudiated by Manitobans, demanding a lengthy stay in the penalty box and a radical rethink of what the party stands for.

Really? When the dust settled, the NDP had scored 45.5 per cent of the popular vote compared to the PCs’ 42.1 per cent. A 3.4 per cent difference in vote share counts as the PC Party being destroyed?

The difference in seats is more lopsided: 34 for the NDP and 22 for the PCs.

That is largely a product of electoral system distortions. The NDP vote, particularly in Winnipeg, was remarkably efficient: seven seats in Winnipeg were won by NDP candidates with less than 1,000 votes. The electoral system did what it almost always does: converted a plurality of votes into a majority of seats for the winning party.

We saw something similar in the 2011 provincial election: Greg Selinger’s NDP won with less than three per cent more votes than the Tories but scored an eye-popping 37 seats to the PCs’ 19. Sometimes things shake out this way under the rules of our zany electoral system.

Heather Stefanson’s loss is not even particularly notable by historical standards. Compare the 2023 result with the results for Selinger’s other campaign in 2016: 26 per cent of the vote and 14 seats. This was far below the PCs’ 2023 result. While the party was certainly hobbled after that defeat, it took only seven years for the NDP to return to power without any great overhaul of the party’s ideological priorities.

Should the PCs be happy with the outcome of this election? Of course not. A loss is a loss.

Even if the party was headed for defeat, going down in flames in seats like Waverley and Lagimodiere, which the PCs won with margins of roughly 25 per cent in the last election, should be unacceptable. When a party is losing winnable seats by 100 votes, which was the case in these two, that suggests the Tories were simply outhustled by the NDP’s get-out-the-vote workers.

So take a chill pill, everyone.

The second consensus which I am dubious about is that the obvious solution to Tory woes in this election is for the party to embrace the progressive side of the Progressive Conservative party, and make haste for the ideological centre.

Indeed, it seems that every time a conservative party loses an election in Canada, this is the simplistic advice offered from the pages of the country’s newspapers.

But if this solution is so obvious then why doesn’t every conservative party in Canada just become a tweedle-dee-tweedle-dum centrist party?

In part, because doing so does not guarantee success and probably even makes it more difficult to win.

One reason for this is that Conservative members and activists in Canada are now often reluctant to allow their leaders to veer across the ideological spectrum like drunk drivers. In the same way that left activists in the NDP try to keep their leaders honest and flex their muscle in party leadership races, so too do Conservative activists.

Just ask former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole. As leader, O’Toole lost the 2021 federal election despite a sharp pivot to the centre. Furthermore, O’Toole’s abrupt centrist turn led in part to him being subsequently ousted from the role of leader, as Conservatives wondered whether they could trust him.

What to do? In the last two decades, Conservative parties in Canada have often benefitted from declining to pivot to the centre. Instead, these parties have discovered they can win by, rather than running away from what they really believe, instead transparently expressing conservative ideas and themes, defending those ideas from attacks, and then acting on those themes and being accountable for them once in office.

With at least four years in the opposition, it’s the right time for PC members to ask what a coherent and principled Manitoban conservatism should look like.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper gave voice to this view after winning the 2011 election: “By saying what we will do and doing what we say, one step at a time we are moving Canada in a conservative direction. And Canadians are moving with us.”

Did the PCs’ provide a consistent, coherent, principled right-wing alternative in this election campaign? Or was the campaign instead a grab-bag of seemingly focus-grouped promises — parental rights, tax cuts on flowers, “stand firm” — that barely hung together?

With at least four years in the opposition, it’s the right time for PC members to ask what a coherent and principled Manitoban conservatism should look like. I’ve got some ideas myself that I’ll write about in the future.

But over-reacting to the result of this election and becoming the local centrist Liberal-in-all-but-name affiliate party is a terrible idea, and likely isn’t feasible to boot.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.