When it comes to uniting the right, the numbers don't add up



Adam Radwanski

The Ottawa Citizen



Saturday, June 21, 2003



TORONTO -- So here we go again. Stephen Harper, channelling Preston Manning and Stockwell Day, is calling on the Progressive Conservatives to do the right thing and forge a coalition with his Canadian Alliance. Tory leader Peter MacKay, taking a page from Joe Clark, is playing coy by expressing vague support while doing little to facilitate it.



Meet the new bosses, same as the old bosses.



Give Mr. MacKay credit for suggesting that negotiations happen behind closed doors. At least he seems to realize that nobody in the real world has any appetite for another endless round of posturing.



Still, there are only two things you need to know about "uniting the right," and the first is that it's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Why? Because the Tories won't let it.



For this, Mr. MacKay's party will be endlessly blamed for dividing conservative votes and keeping the Liberals in power. But the Tories' reluctance to join forces with the Alliance is hardly as arbitrary as their rivals make it out to be. For them, uniting has always been a losing proposition. When they were under pressure to submit to a joint leadership convention, they knew it would mean forfeiting their party's existence. The Alliance was bigger, with more committed members and a caucus several times larger. Had the parties merged when Alliance support was at its peak, whatever Tories went along for the ride would have been effectively swallowed up.



Today, the Alliance is considerably less powerful (well behind the Tories in the polls), and Mr. Harper is proposing joint candidates, not a combined leadership. But if the Tories are wary of this proposal, too, it's with good reason.



Though Mr. Harper has yet to offer specifics, the best guess is that he would lean toward letting incumbent MPs from both parties run without conservative opposition, and then have nomination battles determine the rest. In principle, that sounds fair. But in practice, it would be rather one-sided.



By its nature, the Alliance is an ideologically driven, grassroots-based party with an activist support base. Conservative voters are a more pragmatic bunch, less passionate about their party and less easily mobilized. So in the event of a head-to-head structure, the overwhelming likelihood is that the Alliance would win most nominations, and the Tories would be left as anything but a national party.



Even aside from this practical concern, the reality is that most Tories who were so inclined went to the Alliance a long time ago. True, some have since floated back to the mother ship, but at the party's core is a contingent that wants nothing to do with Mr. Harper or any other Alliance leader. Which brings us to the second thing you need to know about uniting the right: Even if both parties consented, it still wouldn't achieve much.



All the moaning that vote-splitting cost conservatives the 2000 election is based on the flimsy premise that, to determine how a united right would have fared, one only need combine the total votes for the two parties. What's overlooked is that a significant contingent of Tories would take their votes elsewhere rather than get in bed with the Alliance.



So let's do the math. Suppose 75 per cent of Tories supported joint candidates, 20 per cent fled to the Liberals, and five per cent stayed home in protest. And assume that every single Alliance voter could be counted on to stick around. Based on the 2000 results, the two parties would win a grand total of 13 extra seats nationwide -- and only eight in Ontario, at which the initiative is supposedly aimed. The Liberals would still have a majority government.



Ah, but what about all those Liberal voters who'd be won over by a strong alternative with a legitimate shot at power? Well, maybe. But I'm inclined to think it's more important that one of the two parties start looking like a government-in-waiting.



If the recent New Brunswick election taught us anything, it's that the tides can turn in a hurry. And with Jack Layton's NDP siphoning off votes from the Liberals, and the governing party bloated and directionless, the opportunity is there for another party ( most likely the Tories, who have a higher ceiling on their support) to make major inroads. That will only happen, though, if they stop worrying about logistics and start focusing on selling themselves on a legitimate vision for this country's future. Their failure to do so until now is the real reason the Liberals keep on cruising.



Adam Radwanski writes here weekly on national affairs.