How (and How Not) to Deal with Conservative Insurgencies

 

shutterstock_80156809On May 5, Albertans voted to end the longest unbroken streak of success that a governing party has ever enjoyed in Canada. The Alberta Progressive Conservative Party had been in power for 44 years straight; in the most recent election, they fell from 70 seats down to a paltry 10, not enough to even qualify as the official opposition. As of tomorrow, the NDP, a socialist party, runs Alberta. In contrast, the British Conservative Party defied the pundits and the pollsters, winning an outright majority on May 6.

Both parties were challenged on the right: the Progressive Conservatives by the Wildrose Alliance, the British Conservatives by the United Kingdom Independence Party. I believe the difference in outcome was due to the different way they handled their respective right-wing challengers.

The Wildrose Alliance has been around in one form or another since 2005. In the 2004 and 2008 provincial elections, it won one and zero seats respectively. In 2012 it jumped to 17 seats. Trouble was brewing for the PC’s and everybody knew it. After an internal struggle to remove a horrible leader — Alison Redford — the ruling Conservatives decided to do something about Wildrose. On Dec 17, 2014 Wildrose leader, Danielle Smith and eight other MLA’s crossed the floor to sit with the Progressive Conservative government. Problem solved, or so it seemed. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, Wildrose climbed from 17 seats in the 2012 election to 21 seats in the 2015 election, more than making up for the defections.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, David Cameron was grappling with his own right-wing threat from UKIP. An Alberta-style decapitation strike wasn’t in the cards: UKIP hardly had any seats in Parliament (except for some Conservative turncoats) for him to take. Instead, Cameron stole some of UKIP’s thunder by promising to hold a referendum on EU membership, negotiate a better deal for the UK in Europe, and made encouraging noises on immigration. Whether he will carry through on any of this now that he has his majority remains to be seen, but it was enough to keep UKIP from toppling Conservative MP’s through vote splitting.

Until this year, the classic example of this strategy was the Australian federal election of 2004 when John Howard won his fourth term as Prime Minister. While the vote share of his Labour rivals remained steady at 38%, his vote share increased by 3.6%. How did he do this? Simple: he co-opted the program of his smaller, right-wing competitors. For instance, the One Nation Party, led by Pauline Hanson — the ‘fish and chips lady’ — saw its vote share drop by over 3%. With new, revised policies on immigration, many One Nation sympathizers voted for John Howard instead, because he was actually in a position to deliver.

The classic example of what not to do occurred in the 1993 Canadian federal elections when Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives went down in flames. After winning the 1988 federal election over the US free trade deal, Mulroney chose to systematically humiliate his right-wing base. Once free trade was passed, he veered left. He instituted a value added tax, passed draconian gun-control laws, and presided over chronic sky-high deficits. If this wasn’t enough, he tried (twice) to fundamentally rework the Canadian constitution in order to enshrine left-wing labour laws, multiculturalism, socialized medicine, and an apartheid system for Native Canadians into its text. Thankfully, he failed. When Canada’s right inevitably revolted, he thought they had nowhere to go. They did, and the Reform Party went from one seat in 1988 to 51 seats in 1993. Thanks to vote splitting, the formerly dominant Tories went from 156 seats to two in 1993. Yes, you read that right, two.

The lesson for political parties in first-past-the-post electoral systems seems to be this: if you have a challenger who competes against you for your core voters, you had better take them seriously, even if they have achieved little to date. They will continue to be unsuccessful until — all of a sudden — they aren’t. The best way to alleviate the threat is to co-opt at least part of their policies. Because the people who join protest parties are animated by principles rather than ministerial limousines, a decapitation strike — like the one Alberta Premier Jim Prentice expertly executed against Wildrose — won’t work. The absolute worst thing to do is what Brian Mulroney and his hapless successor Kim Campbell did: spit in their faces.

There is a cautionary note for the victorious David Cameron in all of this. Just because UKIP won only one seat (out of 650) in the British Parliament, it nevertheless should not be ignored. UKIP received the third highest number of votes in Britain; its problem is that its supporters are spread out evenly across the UK. The Scottish National Party only got 4.7% of the vote but — because their supporters are concentrated in Scotland — they won 56 seats. In a first-past-the-post electoral system, a party can win many votes and have nothing to show for it, until they cross some critical (but ill-marked) threshold.

The thing Cameron must remember is that the Wildrose Alliance won almost no seats in its first two outings, but it’s now 11 seats ahead of the once-dominant Alberta Tories. Cameron had better not be as complacent with UKIP as the Alberta Tories were with Wildrose. One day, the insurgents might just cross that threshold. In 2004 and 2008, Wildrose received 9% and 6.5% of the vote respectively. In 2015, UKIP won 12.6%. Watch out, David.

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  1. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Interesting.  Don’t have much to add, but interesting.

    • #1
  2. user_231912 Inactive
    user_231912
    @BrianMcMenomy

    I was wondering what happened in Alberta. I thought Alberta would be like Texas; it would vote for the socialists when he’ll froze over. In a perverse way, it reinforces hope in 2016. The Democrats are so sure of their electoral vulnerability that they are going to nominate a candidate who has held a number of posts in government, and has managed to make things worse in every single. Now, let`s see if we can avoid trying to beat something with nothing.

    • #2
  3. user_231912 Inactive
    user_231912
    @BrianMcMenomy

    Electoral invulnerability, sorry. Stupid auto-correct.

    • #3
  4. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    These considerations do not bode well. Centrist Republicans will continue to denigrate and disregard the right. We’re going to get some more of what we deserve.

    • #4
  5. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Canadian Cincinnatus: There is a cautionary note for the victorious David Cameron in all of this. Just because UKIP won only one seat (out of 650) in the British Parliament, it nevertheless should not be ignored.

    Indeed.

    One of the things I like BEST about the Westminster “first-past-the-post” system is the way it allows upstart political parties to think long-term and to build support over time.

    Just look at the history of the Reform/Conservatives in Canada:

    • 1988 Election – Reform Party of Canada – Zero Seats
    • 1993 Election – Reform Party of Canada – 53 Seats (Third Party in the House of Commons, Liberal Majority)
    • 1997 Election – Reform Party of Canada – 60 Seats (Official Opposition, Liberal Majority)
    • 2000 Election – Canadian Alliance Party – 66 Seats (Official Opposition, Liberal Majority)
    • 2004 Election – Conservative Party of Canada – 99 Seats (Official Opposition, Liberal Minority)
    • 2006 Election – Conservative Party of Canada – 124 Seats (Minority Government, Liberal Opposition)
    • 2008 Election – Conservative Party of Canada – 143 Seats (Minority Government, Liberal Opposition)
    • 2011 Election – Conservative Party of Canada – 166 Seats (Majority Government, NDP Opposition)

    Voters have a chance to gauge a party’s performance over time, without having to give them the top job. It’s not an all-or-nothing sort of game.

    • #5
  6. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Another lesson for David Cameron: Pick an enemy (i.e. Labour) and focus on destroying them, rather than being distracted by other upstart parties.

    As the Reform/Conservatives gained support, the dominant Liberals lost support, until finally they couldn’t even achieve Official Opposition status for the first time in history.

    Replacing the Liberals with the socialist NDP is another measure of the Conservatives’ success. It means that voters now have a real choice, rather than the old paradigm of choosing between parties who were mostly identical (the old PC Party and the Liberal Party).

    This wouldn’t have happened if the Reform/Conservatives had divided their resources fighting every other upstart party (the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, etc.).

    • #6
  7. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    It appears here that the Tea Party has generated ideas for the Republicans.  Now if the Republicans don’t follow through, maybe getting creamed in the effort but at least trying, perhaps the Tea Party will be reanimated in 2016.  That would not be good for the Republicans because the Tea Party won’t be taking Democrat votes.

    • #7
  8. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    Misthiocracy:Replacing the Liberals with the socialist NDP is another measure of the Conservatives’ success. It means that voters now have a real choice, rather than the old paradigm of choosing between parties who were mostly identical (the old PC Party and the Liberal Party).

    Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    It’s true that just because they were the most fiscally conservative group on the planet, doesn’t mean that they were “really” conservative. Obviously, it’s entirely possible that no real conservatives exist anywhere.

    I note these two beliefs together, because the “we should work against Labour because the Thatcher government will bring forward the Communist revolution” argument and the “Thatcher and Kinnock are really just two sides of the same coin” argument were the mainstays of Communists in the UK for decades. Those beliefs led to the near total destruction of institutional communism. Although it is possible to come back from defeats, winning through losing has never been a viable strategy in any Anglosphere country.

    • #8
  9. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    Canadian Cincinnatus:Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, David Cameron was grappling with his own right-wing threat from UKIP. An Alberta-style decapitation strike wasn’t in the cards: UKIP hardly had any seats in Parliament (except for some Conservative turncoats) for him to take. Instead, Cameron stole some of UKIP’s thunder by promising to hold a referendum on EU membership, negotiate a better deal for the UK in Europe, and made encouraging noises on immigration. Whether he will carry through on any of this now that he has his majority remains to be seen, but it was enough to keep UKIP from toppling Conservative MP’s through vote splitting.

    It was enough to avoid the total disaster faced by Alberta, but it wasn’t enough to keep UKIP from toppling dozens of Conservative MPs; we have a dramatically less Conservative parliament than we’d have had absent UKIP and Conservative MPs are less conservative than they would have been if UKIP members voted in Conservative MP selections (primary equivalents) rather than UKIP.

    One interesting thing is that the PCs did make serious outreach efforts to Wildrose, with the result that significant numbers of Wildrose politicians defected to the PCs. Similarly, UKIP adopted the approach of outreach to Conservatives, adopting their ideas and gaining converts. In both cases the party that absorbed the other went on to crushing defeat.

    Whatever the outcome of the EU Referendum, UKIP’s claim to have a different policy to the Conservatives (not a particularly strong claim this election) will be gone. In 2020, they’ll either have developed new policies, or they’ll be a single issue immigration party. It’s very hard indeed to maintain that institutionally without embracing regrettable views.

    It’s worth noting that the NDP in Alberta doesn’t seem to have adopted a lot of Liberal ideas. They won solely by splitting the right.

    • #9
  10. Fricosis Guy Listener
    Fricosis Guy
    @FricosisGuy

    James Of England:

    Misthiocracy:Replacing the Liberals with the socialist NDP is another measure of the Conservatives’ success. It means that voters now have a real choice, rather than the old paradigm of choosing between parties who were mostly identical (the old PC Party and the Liberal Party).

    Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    Misthiocracy is talking about the Ottawa House of Commons, where the NDP is indeed now the official opposition.

    And, yes, it was a damned fool thing to let the commies into power.

    • #10
  11. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    Fricosis Guy:

    James Of England:

    Misthiocracy:Replacing the Liberals with the socialist NDP is another measure of the Conservatives’ success. It means that voters now have a real choice, rather than the old paradigm of choosing between parties who were mostly identical (the old PC Party and the Liberal Party).

    Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    Misthiocracy is talking about the Ottawa House of Commons, where the NDP is indeed now the official opposition.

    And, yes, it was a damned fool thing to let the commies into power.

    I’d thought he shifted from federal to provincial from paras 2-3. In that case, I agree with him. Party splits on their side are excellent news. It seems as if he’s saying that it’s good that voters have the choice of a genuine leftist as opposed to a conservative, which I don’t think is right (thank heavens that the last Liberal government was relatively fiscally centrist!). If the choice is between a leftist and a hard leftist, though, then that’s always positive; Alberta is unusual, because generally the right is more thoughtful than the left, and hence less prone to splitting.

    • #11
  12. derek Inactive
    derek
    @user_82953

    It is a bit more complicated. The progressive Conservatives were profligate spenders with twice per capita social spending compared to other provinces. Their last leader increased taxes on the resource companies as well. They deserved to be tossed out as much as Mulroney conservatives.

    Alberta is hurting with the decrease in commodity prices. Investment is slowing down, and as usual with a bit of a hiccup after boom times lots of dead weight gets shuffled out the door. The NDP government will face a general sitting on the hands and probably will do some stupid things, but will face a very unhappy populace as they preside over a rationalization of the economy.

    It is hard to overstate the effect that the resource boom has had. A very long run where middle class skilled trades and professions have done very well, and there have been very good jobs for every one else. Young people from all over the country have moved there. A correction is to be expected; an economy and industry that could thrive at 60-80 per barrel now needs over 100 meaning that costs have gotten out of hand. I suspect we are in a bit of a rough ride, but Ontario will face the toughest challenges as the out of control borrowing will faces a hard wall of decreased interest in investing in a commodity based country squeezed by a market glut.

    • #12
  13. Limestone Cowboy Coolidge
    Limestone Cowboy
    @LimestoneCowboy

    Canadian Cincinnatus: On May 5, Albertans voted to end the longest unbroken streak of success that a governing party has ever enjoyed in Canada. The Alberta Progressive Conservative Party had been in power for 44 years straight; in the most recent election, they fell from 70 seats down to a paltry 10, not enough to even qualify as the official opposition. As of tomorrow, the NDP, a socialist party, runs Alberta. I

    Nice analysis.

    Do you think that migration into Alberta from other more left-leaning parts of Canada has started to alter Alberta’s voting mix?

    • #13
  14. user_64581 Member
    user_64581
    @

    Then again … maybe Alberta ≠ UK and UKIP ≠ Wild Rose.

    You raise some good questions, but I don’t think the situations are terribly comparable.  Yes, stealing UKIP’s thunder was in fact quite a good idea.  But the real problem in Alberta politics wasn’t two conservative parties competing for the majority of the vote — it was the sudden and dramatic swing of the voting public toward the socialists.

    This does not, by the way, mean that suddenly Alberta has a socialist-leaning citizenry.  It does mean that they are deeply cynical and disappointed with the two conservative parties.  The NDP was a resounding protest vote.  But that alone is not sufficient to explain the outcome.

    To understand 2015 it helps to go back to the previous AB election, in which many observers predicted a Wild Rose upset, and there was clear concern by the Conservatives (Note to American casual observers … it is significant that the name is Progressive Conservative … chew on that for a bit) that they would lose their seat to a less compromised brand of conservatism.  In the final weeks prior to the election they made a deal with the dev … uh … teacher’s union to begin to phase out standardized testing, which the  union despised with a passion.  For it’s part the union would be an instant get-out-the-vote army of footsoldiers.  The strategy worked, particularly in heavily-populated areas where this kind of door-to-door tactic pays off most dramatically.

    • #14
  15. user_64581 Member
    user_64581
    @

    In this year’s election the NDP had a clear and credible shot at power, and the teacher’s union found them a more natural ally.  This option was not open to the PCs in the first place.

    Why did voter confidence in the two conservative parties flounder?  Talking to many Albertans, it was simply disgust with the backroom politics and underhanded dealing evident in the floor-crossing incident.  A number of conservative superstars in the WildRose party, including Danielle Smith, who was on a trajectory to the premiership, were completely marginalized and disgraced in the eyes of their own base.  It is unlikely they, as individuals, will rise above the horizon again.  Remarkably, the decapitated Wild Rose party did quite well despite the loss of its most visible members, which says something about their potential had that sorry episode not taken place.  Trying to kneecap their closest rival, the PCs undermined the entire conservative movement, at least in the short run.

    • #15
  16. Fricosis Guy Listener
    Fricosis Guy
    @FricosisGuy

    R. Craigen:Trying to kneecap their closest rival, the PCs undermined the entire conservative movement, at least in the short run.

    In other words, “no enemies to the right.”

    Leninist politics doesn’t always win.

    • #16
  17. SPare Inactive
    SPare
    @SPare

    James Of England:

    Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    I wouldn’t call Alberta the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas: I’d think of places like Utah or Texas before Alberta.  Yes, the PC’s were in charge for 44 years, but recall the full name of that party: Progressive Conservative.  A good many of their members were in that party because that’s where the action was if you wanted to be in power.  Alberta gets a more conservative reputation than it deserves for 3 reasons:

    1.  Oil revenues that allow them to balance the books without a sales tax.  If you look at the amount that they spend per capita, it’s not that different from other provinces.

    2.  Prominent social conservatism in its rhetoric (not always in its execution though).

    3.  Fights against the Liberals in Ottawa, but that’s more to do with pursuing regional/local interests than ideological conflict.

    Yes, the Orange wave was a surprise for me, but not that much more than Bob Rae’s win in Ontario was a generation ago.  I can only hope that they get the same kind of hangover that we did.  Teaches a valuable lesson.

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  18. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    SPare:

    James Of England:

    Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    I wouldn’t call Alberta the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas: I’d think of places like Utah or Texas before Alberta.

    My source is the annual Economic Freedom of North America study. I don’t see a later one, so here’s the 2013 edition, including Texas at 4th place, after Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Delaware. Heritage agrees that Canada is more economically free than the US, and I think it’s relatively uncontroversial to see Alberta as leading the way in Canada.

    Do you have a study that disagrees?

    2. Prominent social conservatism in its rhetoric (not always in its execution though).

    Alberta’s 20 week limit on abortions and lack of support for medical abortions isn’t bad by American standards. Alberta has the highest gun ownership rate in Canada, and they fought to oppose the gun registry. There’s some substance to the SoCon stuff.

    It has been depressing to me watching SoCons on Ricochet embrace the social liberals as “the true conservatives” apparently on the basis that Wildrose were the insurgents, and insurgents are always truer, right?

    3. Fights against the Liberals in Ottawa, but that’s more to do with pursuing regional/local interests than ideological conflict.

    Well, partly, as above.

    • #18
  19. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    James Of England:Having the province run by the harder left instead of the more moderate left is a success? It means that the most economically free jurisdiction in the Americas and probably the world has five years of pain, at the end of which there’s no guarantee that the same thing won’t happen again.

    Five years is not so long. If they screw it up they won’t have much of a hope of ever getting back in again because they’ll FINALLY have to run on their record.  See: Bob Rae.  Without Bob Rae, Ontario never would have had Mike Harris.

    By contrast, when Liberals get into power they have a habit of hanging on for multiple elections, regardless of their performance. Staying in power is the Liberals’ trademark. See: Dalton McGuinty & Kathleen Wynne.

    I would much rather have a Prime Minister Mulcair over a Prime Minister Trudeau. If he screwed it up, Mulcair would be one-and-done, but Trudeau would screw up the country for a generation.

    • #19
  20. Misthiocracy Member
    Misthiocracy
    @Misthiocracy

    Speaking of David Cameron: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”

    Oh Davey, you did NOT really just say that, did you?

    • #20
  21. SPare Inactive
    SPare
    @SPare

    Misthiocracy:

    I would much rather have a Prime Minister Mulcair over a Prime Minister Trudeau. If he screwed it up, Mulcair would be one-and-done, but Trudeau would screw up the country for a generation.

    Which would still be better than his dad, who screwed it up for 2 generations.

    • #21
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