One can only speculate why the former prime minister decided to take the unusual step of endorsing a candidate in the current leadership race — and why he chose to do so now. Perhaps the Poilievre campaign has some reason to believe it needs an extra push to get over the line. Maybe the Poilievre campaign is doing well, but he wants to make sure his victory is clear and overwhelming. Perhaps Harper’s blessing is meant to help the party consolidate after a hotly contested race. Maybe Harper really dislikes Jean Charest. Whatever his reasons, his authentic Harper symbolically connects his personal political project with Pulyev’s own approach to politics and leadership. Not that Andrew Scheer or Erin O’Toole ever vowed to make a dramatic break from Harper’s approach. But if there are Conservatives out there worried about where the next leader might take the party, Harper’s message to them is that his conservatism includes Pierre Pouliev.
Harper’s theory of populist conservatism
In his 2018 book Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption, Harper wrote that conservatives had three possible paths ahead of them in this moment of populist upheaval. They could hold fast to a dogmatic view of conservatism and an ideological belief in supply-side economics. They could “double down on unbridled populism.” Or they could “reform conservatism to address the issues driving populist unrest … adapt conservatism to the practical concerns, interests and aspirations of working- and middle-class people.” WATCH: Stephen Harper backs Pierre Poilievre for Conservative leadership
Stephen Harper is backing Pierre Poilievre in the Conservative leadership race
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper has endorsed Conservative candidate Pierre Poiliev for the party’s next leader. This is the first time Harper has advocated since being voted out of office. Harper argued that this third approach — which he called “populist conservatism” or “applied conservatism” — was similar to his governing style. “A new populist conservatism must apply conservative ideas to the real challenges facing ordinary people,” he wrote. This is not an inherently absurd idea, even if there are significant holes in Harper’s larger analysis. First, it is not yet clear what a “populist conservative” would do about climate change. Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre stands up during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 15, 2022. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press) It’s also unclear how “hands-on” Poilievre’s approach to government would be, as his campaign has largely avoided presenting detailed policy proposals. He would appoint a federal ombudsman to ensure Canadian universities meet his standards for protecting free speech and wants to make Canada the “blockchain capital of the world.” But his only climate policy is to eliminate the national carbon price. Of analysis of inflation excludes global factors and of to face the Bank of Canada it’s defective. His complaints about housing are generally pointed in the right direction, although his solution is a new system of penalties and rewards for councils.
Poilievre’s resonant populism
Harper defines populism rather benevolently as “any political movement that places the broader interests of ordinary people above the special interests of a privileged few.” But it can also be defined as something more inherently hostile — as “an ideology that sees society as ultimately divided into two homogeneous and competing groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, in the words of Cas Mudde, Dutch political scientist. (I also quoted Mudde’s framing of populism in writing about the 2017 Conservative leadership race.) In practice, populism seems to be less about proposing practical solutions to real problems than about finding someone to blame or resent. It is replaced in a way that can threaten traditional institutions. “Populism,” wrote Mudde, “presents a Manichean outlook, in which there are only friends and enemies.” Harper has displayed some of that populism. His government seemed enjoy the battle with academics and public policy experts and attacked”liberal elitesIn Right Here, Right Now, he advances the theory that Western societies can be divided into “somewhere” and “anywhere”. But Poilievre has fully embraced the language of populism. If Harper proposed a conservatism that responded to the concerns that fuel populism, Poulievre seems to propose a populism that celebrates conservative ideals. Poilievre has built his campaign around the idea that “gatekeepers” are holding Canadians back. After being criticized for promising to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada, he claimed that “the elites in Ottawa are beside themselves that I would hold them to account [the] harm they have caused to everyday people”. He called on his supporters to “stand up to wake up the culture” and his campaign criticized his party for choosing a “liberal media personality of the Laurentian elite” to moderate a debate. “Bad politicians make bad decisions and the system protects them,” Poilievre wrote in a fundraising appeal earlier this year. “The media, the pundits, the professors say I shouldn’t attack Justin Trudeau as strongly as I do.”
Where does populism lead?
Harper apparently approves. And if you believe the world is as Poilievre describes it, his arguments are undoubtedly compelling. But where exactly will this populism lead the Conservative Party? While pursuing the populist dream of Brexit, the Conservatives in the UK have burned three prime ministers in the past six years. Their current leader, Boris Johnson, was ousted in a hurricane of scandal. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney may have thought of himself as a conservative populist before his party pushed him out. (Dave Chidley/The Canadian Press) In the United States, the Republican Party has collapsed from a populist cesspool and become a hysterical, anti-democratic personality cult. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who would probably think of himself as a populist conservativehe was ousted by his own party just three years after taking office. If it is possible to imagine that populism could lead to constructive reforms (at least in theory), the evidence shows that a spirit of competition is not easily controlled once it is embraced. Worst-case scenarios aside, it’s not hard to see how the populist approach could end up doing more harm than good. But Stephen Harper’s party is now poised to embrace Pierre Poilievre as its new standard-bearer — and take a spin with an irresistible brand of populist conservatism.
