The last few days have featured a plethora of news articles calling Andrew Scheer’s leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada into question. Ipsos-Reid claims that 63% of Canadians want him to resign[1] (though given that only 34.4% of Canadians voted Conservative this week, that inflated figure seems rather self-serving). The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star ominously reports that the “knives are out for Scheer after a disappointing election night.”[2] Most damningly of all, the Star quoted a “high-ranking Conservative involved in the campaign in Ontario” who likened Scheer to failed Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark: “This was a bad campaign. Scheer is the 21st-century Joe Clark.” The Star helpfully explained its younger readers that Joe Clark “refer[s] to the former Tory leader who was briefly prime minister 40 years ago.” If you will permit me resort to cliché, sometimes less is more; I doff my cap to this brilliantly understated dismissal. (In contrast, I could only manage a woefully bloated critique of Clark in 2017).
