New Democrat leader Howard Hampton suddenly is saying nice things about Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, and they have revealed who he really thinks is heading first past the post on Oct. 10.
The NDP leader in discussing election prospects said the Liberals traditionally have pictured a Conservative leader as “a horrible, evil, nasty, mean-spirited, ugly creature,” half-hidden behind a curtain.
He said Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty may try the same tactic this election, but it will not work, because Tory in three years as leader has tried to make his party more moderate.
Tory has moved his party’s policies closer to the centre and is less confrontational than his best- remembered recent predecessor, premier Mike Harris, and is trying to be seen in the mould of the earlier, durable premier William Davis, who had an ability to get along with almost everybody.
No recent party leader has been as complimentary toward a counterpart who was still a competitor. Leaders normally reserve kind words about rivals until they retire, when they suddenly discover they always had huge respect for those they previously had described only as rogues and incompetents.
Hampton had managed earlier to conceal his admiration for Tory well. The NDP leader had conceded the Conservatives have changed under Tory in no longer being obsessed with massive, across-the-board tax cuts and balanced budgets, as they were under Harris.
But he said they still have an almost complete disregard for the everyday concerns of ordinary Ontarians and are willing to invest only modestly in such essentials as health and education.
Hampton charged Tory’s Conservatives and McGuinty’s Liberals are part of “a new Conservatism” that includes Bay St. financiers and lacks compassion for ordinary people.
He said the Conservatives and Liberals are virtually the same party, so Ontario has two centre-right parties, Tory’s Conservatives and McGuinty’s Liberals.
Hampton said both parties look to Bay St. to tell them what to do and “for the life of them they can’t articulate the difference in their overall fiscal priorities.”
Hampton said the Conservatives are hindered by an ideology the private sector invariably does things better and cheaper than the public sector.
He said the Conservatives are misguided in promoting nuclear power stations that are expensive, unreliable and risky and coal-burning stations that pollute.
Hampton has said Tory showed his lack of concern for ordinary Ontarians when he helped the Liberals push through a massive pay raise for MPPs that is more than the total pay many low-income residents earn in a year.
The NDP leader who has been highly critical of Tory clearly has an ulterior motive in now saying he leads a more moderate party and it may attract voters.
The NDP has only a limited pool of supporters to draw on and to win seats needs the votes for the two parties against it to be divided as equally as possible.
If either the Liberals or Conservatives gain a strong upper hand, the NDP will have difficulty even winning its current handful of ridings.
Hampton hopes calling Tory a moderate will encourage some who think of themselves as moderates to vote for the Conservatives and keep down the Liberal vote, so more New Democrats can sneak in.
This would increase the chance of a minority government, with the NDP holding the balance of power, installing whichever party it chooses in government and in return for its support requiring it to implement some NDP policies, as it did when it installed the Liberals in 1985 and paved the way for a later NDP government.
Hampton’s kind words for the Conservatives also indicate who he thinks is winning. McGuinty’s popularity has fallen dramatically recently because of gaffes, including failing to protect lottery winners, and the Conservatives are neck-and-neck with him in polls.
But the NDP leader has concluded he still needs to give the Conservatives a boost to keep the two rival parties equal and, while McGuinty is down, he is not out.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen Park press gallery.
