Sometime in the next few days, the federal Conservatives’ long, torturously slow and excitement-bereft leadership campaign will come to an end. (Bonus points if you know exactly when. More bonus points if you can name all four candidates.)
Here’s the spoiler: it’s sometime on, around or after Aug. 21, the deadline for mail-in ballots; then, there’s the counting, auditing and finally, the announcing.
But it’s going to be without that key ingredient of pomp and circumstance — it’s essentially without drama, colour or the poll-boosting presence of having the candidates in front of the public eye.
No televised convention, no speeches, no tumble of colour-appropriate balloons from their prepositioned netting in the rafters above the podium. It’s like having the official accountants announce the winners of the Academy Awards by reading from a printed-out list in the quiet of their office.
There’s nothing that slows momentum like a full stop and, frankly, the campaign hasn’t been able to reach anything beyond public slow-mentum or no-mentum ever since then.
Surely, the low-key process has not been entirely of the Conservatives’ own making — in fact, little of it has been. The COVID-19 pandemic derailed plans for a June convention, as well as put the leadership process on temporary hiatus as everyone found their feet during the lockdown.
There’s nothing that slows momentum like a full stop and, frankly, the campaign hasn’t been able to reach anything beyond public slow-mentum or no-mentum ever since then.
(Not inside the party, of course — if you’ve got a coveted Tory membership and are a prospective vote, you’re getting a deluge of communications by email and every other sort of contact right now. But that’s preaching to the converted, honestly — the committed Conservatives are already in the voting bag.)
For everyone else — particularly those who might be convinced to vote Tory in the next federal election — the coverage has been about things like who’s leading the finance battles and little else.
It’s certainly a political disadvantage for a new leader, even at a time when the federal Liberals seem intent on repeatedly demonstrating their skill at self-inflicting wounds.
Imagine if the times were different and a lively Tory campaign was gleefully putting the boots to a federal Liberal government that can’t seem to get a handle on even the most basic tenets of ethical behaviour. The convention would be a real opportunity to energize the team — and a great time to get an energetic message to the rest of Canadian voters.
The Tories have been rising in the polls, despite the fact that their current leader passed his best-before date long ago with the announcement he’d be leaving — an announcement current leader Andrew Scheer made, believe it or not, on Dec. 12. 2019. Eight full months ago. The Tories have been rising, of course, primarily because the Liberals are becoming adept at falling, and even a holding pattern seems more attractive than free-fall.
But the real bottom line is that it’s hard for a new leader to make a mark, harder still with Parliament on near-total hiatus due to COVID-19, and ever harder still if that new leader is starting from a near-dead stop.
But there’s one thing for sure: if the new Conservative leader can dig their way out of the hole they’re starting in, they’ll have demonstrated they are a force worth reckoning with.
If they hit the ground running, the Liberals might suddenly learn that they’ve got to start running again, too.
And frankly, the Liberals have looked like they are far too comfortable on the bench lately. Skip your regular electoral exercise routine, and your lungs and legs forget just as quickly.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire newspapers and websites across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
