Back when Erin O'Toole won the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada I stated in this space that he would have to actually lead. He did not so his final fate should surprise no one.
All political parties are multi-headed beasts. The Conservatives are not unique in that sense. The key for any leader of a party is to be able to convince all of the various interests within it to pull in the same direction, to water down their wine sufficiently so that their team stays in power long enough to achieve their objectives in an incremental fashion. Mr. O'Toole did not do that.
In his defence I am not certain any leader would be able to do that with the current Conservative Party of Canada. There may be too many factions who are not willing to compromise and/or think long-term within the Party to make it a viable political party but he should have at least tried and he did not. He pandered or at least attempted to pander but that is not the same.
Also in his defence his predecessor did him no favours by completely shirking his responsibility to renew the CPC after losing in 2015. He had three years to do so and never even attempted to do it. So Mr. O'Toole took over the same party that was created in 2004 and because he always had to put election readiness at the top of his priority list, because of the minority government situation, he could not make any efforts to renew the party either
So now the Conservatives have to elect their fourth leader to face Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in about 18 to 24 months. I am not certain who it will be but he or she is going to face the same problems as Mr. O'Toole and he or she will have to find a way to lead. We will have to see if they can actually do so but as I stated in a recent post the Conservatives might have to be humiliated during the next election to finally kick start the long overdue renewal of the party and to break the logjam of competing and uncompromising interests within the CPC.
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