February 13, 2025
The Conservatives should use a clean, quick coup to replace Scheer. Here's how
Is the alternative — a six-month campaign of internal bloodletting that at best results in a still longer leadership race, and at worst resolves nothing — any better?
Is the alternative — a six-month campaign of internal bloodletting that at best results in a still longer leadership race, and at worst resolves nothing — any better?

Here is what the next six months might look like for the Conservatives. Their leader, Andrew Scheer, having stumbled through an election campaign he might have won with a platform that was sure to lose, ignores widespread calls to quit in favour of hanging on until the April leadership review.

Unable to dislodge him before then, his critics in the party focus on ensuring he does not survive the vote. The months pass, filled with anonymous sniping in the media, and punctuated by increasingly strident calls for his dismissal from riding executives and party grandees.

At the convention, he neither does so well (more than 90 per cent support) as to clearly confirm his leadership, nor so poorly (less than 50 per cent) as to clearly end it, but something in between. Without consensus on what level of support (70 per cent? 75? 80?) would be sufficient, the leader might attempt to carry on — but in such a weakened state that he could do little but invite further attacks on his leadership.

Alternatively, he might step down, leaving the party leaderless for another six to nine months while it elects a replacement, by the same dirty, gameable system of mass membership sales that elected him. Either way, consumed with its own internal struggles, the party offers no serious opposition to the governing Liberals, probably for the life of this Parliament.

So that’s one way the party can deal with its leadership problem. The other is to get it over with: a clean, quick coup that, however brutal, leaves a lot less blood on the floor than the alternative. Until now the party has lacked the means to such a swift and certain end. This week, the opportunity has arrived to arm itself with it.

[…]

See Also:

(1) While Andrew Scheer fights the knives, Justin Trudeau’s off surfing

(2) What Canadian conservatism really needed was a Barry Goldwater

(3) MP defined-benefit pensions are one reason for opposition parties to prop up a Liberal minority

(4) Elizabeth May steps down as leader of federal Green party, names Jo-Ann Roberts as successor

(5) Fraud, corruption trial of ex-SNC executive told of links to Gadhafi’s son