How the Conservatives of Canada have thrown away a 27-point leadership to lose again

Conservatives in Canada trade the fault for Monday evening’s election loss, which shows that Pierre Poilievre Divisions must cure within the movement while fighting to stay as a leader.

When a clear liberal victory came up on the election evening, conservative candidates and their supporters had one question: what just happened?

The party had lost a remarkable lead of 27 points in opinion polls and has not won an election for the fourth time in a row.

And while it was given seats and earned almost 42% of the popular mood – the highest share since the party was founded in 2003 – the leader Poilievre was elected from the seat he had held over the past 20 years.

“Nobody is happy with that,” Shakir Chambers, a conservative strategist and vice-president of the Ontario-based consultancy firm The Oyster Group, told the BBC.

The party is now trying to work out how things are progressing.

At the top of the agenda, the conservatives will find a way to perform their duties as an official opposition – second place in the Canada parliament whose task is to call the sitting government to account – without their leader in the house.

Prior to a Caucus meeting next Tuesday to discuss this, Poilievre announced his plan on Friday to walk in a special elections of the Alberta constituency to win back a chair.

That special election will be activated by the resignation of conservative MP-elected Damien Kurek, who said he will voluntarily resign to let Poilievre back after what he called “a remarkable national campaign”.

“An unstoppable movement has grown under his leadership and I know we need Pierre to fight in the lower house,” Kurek said in a statement.

Unlike the US, federal politicians in Canada do not have to live in the city or province.

A big question is whether Poilievre still has the support of his own party to stay as a leader. Mr. Chambers said that the answer is so far a resounding yes.

“Pierre has a lot of support in the caucus,” he said. “I don’t think there is someone who wants to remove him, or who has super high ambitions who wants to replace him as a leader.”

A number of high -profile conservatives have already returned to him. One of them is Andrew Scheer, a current member of parliament and former leader of the party, who said that Poilievre should stay to “ensure that we finish the job next time”.

Others throw the blame about where they went wrong.

Jamil Jivani, who won his own constituency in a suburb of Toronto handy, was of the opinion that Ontario leader Doug Ford had betrayed the conservative movement and the party had cost the elections.

The federal and provincial conservative parties are legally different entities, although they belong to the same ideological tent, and Ford is the leader of the progressive conservative party of Ontario.

He often made the headlines during the election campaign for his Get Attitude with Donald Trump and the trade war of the US President.

“He could not stay out of our company,” Jivani said a CBC reporter.

Jivani, who attended Yale University in a previous life with the American vice-president JD Vance, where the two good friends became, accused Ford of distracting the federal conservatives campaign and “positioning themselves as a political genius of which we have to take on”.

But Mr. Chambers, the conservative strategist, said that Poilievre will also have to confront where the party falls short.

Poilievre, known for its combative political style, has struggled with being unlikely Among the general Canadian public.

He also did not succeed in strengthening the support of popular conservative leaders in some provinces, such as Ford van Ontario, who did not campaign for Poilievre, despite his recent victory of the landslides in a provincial election earlier this year. However, Ford posted a photo of him and liberal leader Mark Carney with coffee.

“The last time I checked it, Pierre Poilievre never came out in our elections,” Ford told reporters earlier this week. “Actually, he or one of his lieutenants told all his members:” Don’t dare to go out and help “.

“Isn’t that ironic?”

Another conservative Prime Minister, Tim Houston from Nova Scotia – who also did not campaign for Poilievre – said that the federal party should do what “soul seekers” have to do after the loss.

“I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good in pushing people away, not so good at pulling people,” Houston said.

Not every prime minister was on the sidelines. Poilievre was endorsed by Alberta’s Danielle Smith and Scott Moe from Saskatchewan, both Western conservatives.

Kory Teneycke, the campaign leader of Ford, who publicly criticized the Poilievre campaign during the elections, which angry federal conservatives, rejected the idea that Ford had cost him the non -registering him the elections.

He told the BBC that the bigger problem for him was not Poilievre to unite conservative voters in Canada.

“What is a conservative in different parts of the country can look very different,” he said, adding that the populist rhetoric and aggressive style of Poilievre encouraged conservatives in the West, but that alienated in the east.

“There was a lot of Trump -Nabootsing in terms of how they presented the campaign,” said Mr Teneycke.

“Donald Trump is number one for most in Canada public enemy, and I don’t think it happens very well.”

He added that he believes that some of the “soul seekers” will have to include a plan through the conservatives of Poilievre about how to build a coalition of the right in a country “as large and diverse as Canada”.

Asked by reporters what would be needed to cure the gap, Ford replied: “All they have to do is make a phone call.”