Can Pierre, the angry Tory attack dog, learn to stop scaring the neighbourhood?

Opinion

It is a tragic irony obscured by stunned disbelief.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost the 45th general election, and he lost his seat. And yet, in his concession speech early Tuesday morning, Poilievre clung to a glass-half-full analysis of the results and indicated a desire to stay on as leader.

Two days after the election, Poilievre has not confirmed he will stay on. But neither has he indicated he will step down.

Save for the militant partisans who continue to support him, it is not hard to spot the irony here.

Six months ago, it was Justin Trudeau who refused to leave his post as Liberal leader, clinging to a desperate belief he could defy all the naysayers and win another election. Poilievre was a direct witness to the former prime minister’s inexplicable lack of self-awareness, but he was no innocent bystander.

His relentless attacks helped transform Trudeau into a sponge that soaked up all the anger and fear Canadians had about the pandemic, inflation, the cost of housing, crime and the opioid crisis. Eventually, Trudeau was the only person in his government who could not see that, having become sopping wet with blame, he had no political value.

Trudeau’s hesitance back then was due, in part, to the feeling he was being unjustly blamed for all of society’s woes. And to be fair, he was never the political villain that Poilievre made him out to be.

However, being unfairly blamed is not a strong argument for any leader to stay on; not for Trudeau then, and not for Poilievre now.

Poilievre failed twice over, losing the election and his seat. He took what most observers believed was an insurmountable surplus of national support and turned it into a deficit.

Mitigating his losses is the fact that the Conservative party does have reason to celebrate some of its accomplishments in this election.

The Tories gained more seats (24) than any other party, and got more votes (8.1 million) than ever before in their history. Important seats were seized in important regions of the country outside of the party’s epicentre in Western Canada.

Poilievre could also claim the result was triggered, not by his own performance, but by circumstances outside his control. In particular, by U.S. President Donald Trump’s unanticipated decision to threaten Canada’s existence as a sovereign nation and cripple our economy with tariffs.

This is the theory Poilievre allies are amplifying: he should stay because, even though he was blindsided by Trump, he won more seats. Venerable Tory strategist Allan Gregg, a Poilievre ally, wrote in the Toronto Star that the gains the Conservative leader made should not be dismissed.

However, Gregg acknowledged that Poilievre’s fate was sealed when he did not soften his message and portray himself more as a “builder and not just a disruptor” of federal politics. Thus, the challenge, Gregg suggested, was for Poilievre to change.

“Is he, by temperament and personality, capable of this transformation?” Gregg wrote. “I don’t know. But if he is, the Conservatives would be well advised to stick with him.”

Tories who subscribe to this theory would be well advised to ask themselves two questions.

First, why did Poilievre suffer more from Trump’s threats than Carney?

And second, why did voters abandon the NDP?

On the first question, Poilievre suffered more because he embraced Trumpian language and tactics to attack Trudeau’s political brand.

He leaned into the lexicon of Trump’s greatest hits, calling Liberals “wackos” and promising to combat “wokeism.” The company he kept — from convoy truckers to white supremacists and far-right culture warriors — only cemented the impression that he admired Trump’s approach.

However, once Canadians united against Trump’s threats, Poilievre seemed like an inappropriate option to lead the country.

The answer to the second question is closely related to the first: it appears a pronounced fear that Poilievre skewed too Trumpian convinced a good number of the nearly two million voters who abandoned the NDP in this election to vote strategically for the Liberals.

Notwithstanding the answers to these questions, is it still possible that Poilievre could, over the next four years, create a completely new political persona? Those who have studied Poilievre most closely would say no.

In a biography released during the federal campaign, journalist and lawyer Mark Bourrie argued Poilievre would have to betray the very essence of who he has always been in order to become the leader Gregg envisions. Bourrie told the Globe and Mail that Poilievre is “an angry teenager in the body of a grown man. That makes him a stellar opposition politician. It’s a bad combination in a prime minister.”

Failed political leaders will always have a cadre of supporters urging them to stay on. And it should be noted that in some instances, particularly in elections they were never supposed to win, a leader can make a strong case to stay the course.

But leaders who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory do not have the luxury of viewing their performance through a glass-half-full lens. For those leaders, it’s simply time to move on.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca