{"id":368317,"date":"2021-11-17T00:39:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T21:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/erin-otoole-unresponsive-macleans-ca\/"},"modified":"2021-11-17T00:39:16","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T21:39:16","slug":"erin-otoole-unresponsive-macleans-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/erin-otoole-unresponsive-macleans-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"#Erin O’Toole, unresponsive – Macleans.ca"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Erin O’Toole, unresponsive – Macleans.ca<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Paul Wells: Without power or focus once again, the Conservative Party has been left disapp<\/a>ointed\u2014and alone with the voices in its head\n <\/div>\n
\n My favourite bit of any story about Erin O\u2019Toole\u2019s leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada these days is the part where his office declines a chance to defend him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBatters did not respond to Global News<\/a>\u2019 request for comment Monday,\u201d one chronicle of a rogue Senator\u2019s efforts to unseat the leader said. \u201cNeither did O\u2019Toole\u2019s office<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier: \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s office did not respond<\/a> to The Star<\/em>\u2018s request for comment.\u201d \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s office has not yet commented<\/a>.\u201d \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s office did not respond to multiple requests<\/a> for comment.\u201d \u201cO\u2019Toole\u2019s office did not return<\/a> a request for comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

(To be fair, I\u2019m not sure what returning<\/em> a request for comment would entail. \u201cWould you like to comment?\u201d \u201cNot really. Would you?\u201d<\/em>)<\/p>\n

In one of my favourites, from Global\u2019s redoubtable Alex Boutilier, MPs are told to refer<\/a> questions about seat distribution to the Office of the Leader of the Opposition\u2014which then refuses to comment. Look, if anybody\u2019s not going to be commenting, make sure it\u2019s us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0There\u2019s no you in Team Trudeau\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To say the least, it\u2019s easy these days to find communications experts, in any organization, who are quite convinced that the smartest thing to do in a given circumstance is to forego comment. O\u2019Toole, or the people he hires to withhold comment on his behalf, seems to have raised reticence to the level of art. If, hypothetically, the earth were to open up and swallow him tonight, I wonder how many weeks would go by before anyone could be sure it had happened. I\u2019ve got a long history of being less clever than communications pros, so for all I know, maybe it\u2019s actually really smart to respond to accusations of a leadership vacuum by acting out a leadership vacuum.<\/p>\n

But so far what\u2019s surprising is the extent to which, for Conservatives, the autumn of 2021 is starting to resemble the autumn of 2019.<\/p>\n

Both times, a federal election led to a result that mixed disappointment with tantalizing progress for the main opposition party: a popular-vote plurality, a Liberal incumbent held to a minority in the House of Commons, but no outright victory, no return to power. Each time, the immedia<\/a>te disappointment led to questions about the leader\u2014Andrew Scheer then, Erin O\u2019Toole now. Each time, the early grumbling seemed to give way to longer-term pragmatism. \u201cSure, we don\u2019t love this guy, but we can\u2019t just be switching leaders every few months either. Let him be.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0All the good politicians are in Montreal\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And yet by the time the snow flew, both in 2019 and in 2021 questions about the leader had returned. In a second wave, if I may borrow a gruesome analogy. For O\u2019Toole this must be particularly disappointing. He was supposed to represent an alternative to everything Scheer had come, by the end of his leadership, to represent. O\u2019Toole was climate friendlier. He had offered agreement in principle to marching in as-yet-hypothetical Pride parades. Fat lot of good it\u2019s done him so far. In yet another weird flashback to the Scheer era, he\u2019s beset by opponents who, to say the least, seem not to have a clear alternative in mind. Denise Batters was a Peter MacKay supporter<\/a>. Did she expect MacKay to be more of a true-blue conservative than O\u2019Toole has been? Does she expect MacKay to return from (there\u2019s no kinder way to phrase this) ignominy to run again\u2014to O\u2019Toole\u2019s right? I\u2019d ask her, but I\u2019m given to understand she\u2019s not responding to requests for comment. Which, I mean, would you?<\/p>\n

This too was the curse of 2019. \u201cNot Scheer\u201d was an easy answer to who Conservatives wanted as leader, easier than providing an actual person\u2019s name turned out to be. Brad Wall, Jason Kenney, Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and Pierre Poilievre turned out to be indisposed. Most had made no secret of their reluctance to run. Some would have been highly problematic candidates if they had run. One or two may yet be highly problematic candidates if given the chance.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Michael Wernick has some advice\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What\u2019s wearing the leader, now as in 2019, is the sound of silence. Two things can be relied on to rally even a moderately divided party: power and a crisis. If O\u2019Toole had won the election he\u2019d have actual cabinet jobs to hand out, a throne speech to write, a new course in government to steer. It\u2019s not easy and it\u2019s not without its own peril, but power at least brings a sense of momentum. Crisis, and by this I mean a crisis out in the real world, clarifies stakes. It encourages people to set aside petty differences to meet the needs of the moment. But in the absence of a crisis, or indeed much of anything else, a party is left alone with the voices in its head.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m almost wondering whether Justin Trudeau\u2019s reluctance to convene Parliament, about which I recently grumbled, isn\u2019t a stroke of tactical genius. Conservatives facing a Trudeau know what they\u2019re fighting. Conservatives facing the void soon find it staring back at them. If I were Trudeau I\u2019d wonder whether it\u2019s possible to prorogue this Parliament before it starts.
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