Tory down but not out…yet

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are being uncharacteristically generous to their defeated leader John Tory and this indicates they have a lot of problems.

Tory lost an election and the riding in which he ran to Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals on Oct.10. And, the Conservatives, who have been in power for 50 of the past 64 years and are content with nothing less than winning, normally have quickly dropped leaders who lost as if they had bird flu.

But the Conservative MPPs, although not yet their entire party, instead have placed their defeated leader on a type of probation, much like the trial period employers often give new employees to test if they want to keep them permanently.

They required Tory first to renounce unequivocally his promise to fund private faith-based schools, which cost him any chance of winning the election, and he did.

The MPPs also warned he will have to face a leadership review in February at which would-be successors can challenge. Meanwhile he can search for an MPP willing to give up a seat for him and the party will assess his performance leading outside the legislature and any issues remaining from the election. This is not quite a reprieve, but is at least a stay of execution.

The MPPs still worry justifiably Tory’s promise on schools will come back to haunt them, but are showing patience with Tory because he has gained an image as sincere, likeable, hardworking and a good debater when it mattered, in the TV debate between leaders.

These attributes are not in huge abundance in Ontario politics and the Conservatives are reluctant to let them go.

The Conservatives have other concerns that hamper them in booting out Tory quickly, because unlike in the past, when highly qualified Conservatives lined up seeking to lead the most successful party in Canada, the current party has no clearly suitable aspirant waiting in the wings.

The candidates who lost but shone most in recent leadership races, former provincial ministers Jim Flaherty and Tony Clement, who also have strikes against them, now head important ministries for the federal Conservatives and are unlikely to give up this prestige and security to take on the risky role of Ontario opposition leader.

The Conservatives may have someone in their caucus who could do the job, because McGuinty was an unremarkable backbencher when delegates chose him leader to keep out other candidates who scared them and now has won two elections. But future leaders in the Conservative caucus are not obvious.

Conservative MPPs also are in no hurry to see Tory depart because most of them, including their most listened-to members, Bob Runciman and Elizabeth Witmer, pushed him as the man to lead them out of the wilderness and would be embarrassed to admit so soon after he has mired them in a swamp.

Tory can count himself lucky because the Conservatives’ tradition of casting aside leaders who lost is well established. Mike Harris is cited often these days as a leader who lost an election but was given a second chance and won, with the implication Tory can do the same.

But Harris was thrust into his first election only four months after the Conservatives chose him leader and no-one dreamed of blaming him for that loss, while Tory became leader three years before an election and had time to prepare.

Frank Miller lost the Conservatives’ majority in an election and then government when the Liberals and New Democrats combined, and party members led by former leadership rival Larry Grossman then undermined and forced him out as leader

Grossman lost the next election in a landslide, did not need to be told it would be difficult for him to hold on and quit as leader almost before the last votes were counted.

Eves lost to let in Tory and observed the code a defeated Conservative leader has to go – but Tory has some chance to break this pattern.