Thank God, the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race is over. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, it was nasty, brutish and long, way too long for anyone’s mental health. Especially if you were volunteering on a campaign, and even more so if your candidate did not win. Which was my experience: despite valiant efforts, and a noble fight, Jean Charest did not take home the crown. In the end, rival Pierre Poilievre swamped all his adversaries, winning 68 per cent of the points. Let’s just say the after party was not exactly a rocking good time.
But that’s politics: you lick your wounds, turn the page, rally behind the winner, and move on. I’m not going to spill barrels of virtual ink dissecting the numbers; enough other writers already have. I’d rather look to the future and what the result portends for the party’s chief adversary, Justin Trudeau. And the answer is: he better get ready for a very nasty fight.
If we have one takeaway from the past eight months, it’s that a lot of Canadians are angry, angrier than most of us realized. They are mad about the pandemic, mad about taxes, mad about the high cost of living. They signed up in droves to make their voice heard, just like they descended on Ottawa to yell at the prime minister. They are like a hive of bees, ready to explode.