Free Essays

UK and Canadian Tories

Continued from: Conservative Party in the UK and in Canada: Part 2

The Conservatives had their worst electoral performance since 1945, gaining only 165 seats from 31.4% of the vote. 38 ministers lost their seats. The supposition that Defence Secretary Michael Portillo would be a favourite contender for a post-election leadership battle, was dramatically stumped as he lost his Enfield Southgate seat to a 27-year-old Labour candidate. In fact, not a single constituency in Scotland or Wales elected a Conservative MP.

The day after the election, John Major resigned as the Party leader to make way for William Hague.

An early test of Mr. Hague's leadership was the Oxbridge by-election on July 31st which was caused by the death of Conservative MP Sir Michael Shersby. The Tories held the seat, increasing their majority by more than 3,000 votes.

Now, let's re-call some of Canadian Conservative history. Joe Clark, M.P. from Rocky Mountain Alberta, was elected to lead the Party in February of 1976. In May 1979, he won a minority government, 136 to 114 seats. In any event, Clark announced he would govern as if he had a majority. Well, as Claire Hoy commented in his Margin of Error, he did not have a majority, an obvious fact that came crashing home to him on December13, 1979, with the defeat of Finance minister John Crosbie's budget, which featured an eighteen-cent-per-gallon excise tax on gasoline, and spoke of "short-term pain for long-term gain." As John Guy states in his People, Politics and Government, the leader's "weak political image" continued to hurt the party even after the defeat. Thus, in 1983, recognizing the growing dissension, Clark announced his resignation, and at the same time, declared his candidacy in the upcoming leadership race.

The leadership was won by Brian Mulroney. It is hard to call him an unpopular PM, since it looks like he had other problems except unpopularity. Murray Dobbin in his work The Politics of Kim Campbell comments that many Canadians would be happy to forget the "nine long years" while Mulroney was in power, while Financial Post simply calls him "a hated prime minister".

When Brian Mulroney was gone Kim Campbell took his place. What shocked many people, remarks Murray Dobbin, were the polls that said how well a renewed Conservative Party would do in an election, specifically with Kim Campbell as the new Tory leader. As a result of one of the polls, she would win 43 percent of the vote compared to 25 percent for our present PM Jean Chretien. Mr. Dobbin comments that the hatred of Brian Mulroney as an individual was so intense and hopes for the post-Mulroney Canada so great, that people were ready to actually give the Conservative Party another term in office. Liberal leader Jean Chretien and NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin, despite their opposition to most of Mulroney's policies, still represented the old guard to many Canadians. Meanwhile, Campbell introduced herself as the "new direction". It is an image that Canadians want to believe, explains Murray Dobbin. Consequently, Kim Campbell became the party leader. As it is stated on the Conservative Party website, the first woman Prime Minister "oversaw the largest restructuring of government in our history". She reduced the size of the Federal Cabinet from 35 to 25.

Definitely, the opinion polls were not exactly right, as Kim Campbell lost 1993 federal election. She lost it to "yesterday's man," Jean Chretien. She lost it, Toronto Star stated, when she predicted that few jobs would be created in Canada before the end of the decade. In December, she left her party's leadership. With the election lost, John Guy remarks, the old guard gave the task of reconstruction to Jean Charest. He was one of only two Progressive Conservative survivors in the House of Commons - not even enough seats to be recognized as an official parliamentary party. In the 1997 election Charest promised to reduce income taxes by 10% and get tougher on crime. The election was lost.

In 1998 Jean Charest stepped down. "Jean Charest jumped from the Tory leadership to the Quebec Liberal Party", Maclean's Journal remarked.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne took over the leadership of the party. Though, her rule did not last very long. On November 14, 1998 Joe Clark became a leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada the second time in his life. "Clark is planning to become Canada's Comeback Kid", Maclean's Journal in Toronto says. An old leader who had failed the party in the past returned in power after fifteen years. Accordingly to Maclean's Journal many of Clark's friends warned him that the party would use him to get through its current crisis, then dump him after the next election for a new face. Even though it may sound sad to Clark, this may come true.

Somehow, Joe Clark not only managed to become the leader of the Canadian Tories, but also is planning to win in the next election. "Canadians want to stop splitting the votes that elect Liberals by default", he declared in an interview in December 1998. "We're aiming for all available voters".

Continued here: Conservative Party in the UK and in Canada: Part 4