Life after death for Canada’s crushed Conservatives Story

Voters of a conservative bent in the riding, or constituency, of Battle River—Crowfoot in rural Alberta should give a bit of thought to the spelling of Pierre Poilievre’s name. They will need to write it in on a by-election ballot on August 18th.

Mr Poilievre is not from the riding. The vote was in effect called as a means to give him a shot at a parliamentary seat. He needs it. He led the Conservatives to a crushing general-election defeat by Mark Carney’s Liberals in April. Mr Poilievre lost the Ottawa riding he had maintained a firm grip on for two decades. Without a seat he cannot continue as Canada’s formal opposition leader.

So, along with more than 200 other candidates (hence the write-in ballot), he is contesting the by-election in Canada’s second-safest Conservative district. It is far more than a matter of parliamentary procedure. Only a resounding victory will help restore his reputation and consolidate his grip on the party. The conditions that sent it to its fourth election loss in a row have not abated.

At the end of 2024 the Liberal Party had sunk in opinion polls, with the Conservatives holding a commanding 25-point lead. Four months on, the Conservatives crashed yet again to the Liberals, this time led by Mr Carney in place of Justin Trudeau.

What happened? The former central banker bristled against Donald Trump’s graceless claim that Canada should become America’s 51st state or face hobbling tariffs. No way, said Mr Carney: Canada would restructure and diversify its economy away from its previous overwhelming dependence on trade with the United States. He has been diligent in nudging his party back towards the centre on issues such as taxes and energy development and has dropped many of Mr Trudeau’s policies deemed excessively “woke”. When, on July 31st, Mr Trump carried out his threat to impose a 35% tariff on Canadian exports, it only added fuel to the nationalist outrage that drove the Liberal surge in April.

At the same time, a swan-dive in support for the socialist third party, the New Democrats (NDP), has for the time being turned Canadian politics into a two-party tussle. But this means that the split vote among progressives is no longer bound to help the Conservatives to victory, as it has in the past. None of these developments bodes well for Mr Poilievre, who will face his party’s verdict on his leadership in January.

Amid all this, a few bright spots for Mr Poilievre. His decision to stick to cost-of-living issues did attract support from younger and working-class Canadians. The Conservatives’ share of the vote rose to 8m, or 41% of the total—its highest in nearly four decades. Mr Poilievre believes that can be built upon next time around. When he hasn’t been campaigning in Black River—Crowfoot, he has been asking the party faithful, “How do we add another roughly a million votes to get us over the finish line?”

The line may be receding; polling data suggest that backing for Mr Poilievre and his Conservatives is softening. A recent survey by Nanos Research put Liberal support at 45% against 32% for the Conservatives. That might be thanks to a lingering post-election honeymoon. But the poll also asked respondents for their preference for prime minister: 52% opted for Mr Carney and only 24% for Mr Poilievre.

This suggests that quite a few Conservatives prefer the Liberal incumbent to their own standard-bearer, among them some powerful Conservative premiers of provincial governments. Perhaps that is because, like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton decades ago, he has junked his party’s old leftist dogma to appeal to a broader swathe of centrist voters. He is spending more on national defence and has scrapped consumer taxes on carbon pollution. He is cutting bloated government departments by 15% and is preparing to enact tougher laws against crime. Much of this programme was pinched from Mr Poilievre’s platform. Voters do not seem to mind the theft.

Supporters of Mr Poilievre, especially among the 144 Conservative MPs elected in April, say he has earned the right to face down Mr Carney. At 46, Mr Poilievre remains a good communicator. And under his leadership his party continues to rake in more money than its rivals.

Not good enough, says Regan Watts, a longtime Conservative whom Mr Poilievre has previously consulted. “Measured against Mr Carney’s immaculate credentials, Mr Poilievre’s résumé looks parochial.” And the Conservative leader’s insistence privately that he would be prime minister but for Mr Trump’s intervention and for the slump in the NDP’s vote share, says Mr Watts, evince a man who refuses to accept responsibility for the election loss. Instead, he should tone down the sloganeering and put more business luminaries on his front bench.

Mr Poilievre’s defenders say Mr Carney’s honeymoon cannot last. It will take years for Canada to restructure its economy and diversify exports away from the United States. If the Liberals fail to fulfil their promises of massive infrastructure projects at high speed, voters will soon be disenchanted, they say. But that might seem to put the Conservatives’ fate in the hands of the Liberals. “Hope,” says Mr Watts, “is not a strategy.”