KINSELLA: Conservative Party should move on from Pierre Poilievre

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A few years ago, I wrote this:

“(Pierre Poilievre) is one of the Conservative Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Like the Biblical Horsemen, everything he says and does is bad. Everything that is good that he touches withers and dies …He is one of the most despicable, loathsome politicians to ever grace the national stage. He is a pestilence made flesh.

“Pipsqueak Pierre Poilievre is a disgrace to Parliament. He is a joke.”

Tell us what you really think, Warren!

In the fullness of time, I revised my opinion. I thought the Conservative leader-to-be had matured, somewhat. He jettisoned the WEF conspiracy theories, the pro-convoy idiocy, the dalliances with the COVID kooks. He started to act like a leader should. He grew up.

But the good people of the Carleton riding obviously didn’t agree. They weren’t so willing to forgive and forget. Somewhere between Monday night and Tuesday morning, voters in that riding — the riding Poilievre had held for a generation, just about — sent the Tory leader packing. They chose his Liberal opponent, Bruce Fanjoy, who is probably just as surprised as the rest of us.

Fanjoy didn’t just defeat the Conservative leader — he clobbered him, by 4,000 votes. It was a humiliation. It was a pounding. But even then — tellingly — Poilievre didn’t get the message.

“We know that change is needed but change is hard to come by,” he said to his stunned followers, early Tuesday.

“It takes time. It takes work and that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time.”

But is Pierre Poilievre the sort of guy who “learns lessons?” Is he the one who can achieve “an even better result the next time?”

The available evidence isn’t persuasive. Just a few weeks ago, Poilievre had a 30-point lead over the Liberals. He had a massive war chest. He had a party that was united behind him.

And, even after all that, he failed. His party lost. He lost. He blew it.

When I wrote the above column, years ago, I was really, really angry at Pierre Poilievre. He had tried to humiliate Jean Chretien’s former chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, who was then — visibly — dying of cancer. Pelletier died not long afterwards.

It was a profoundly cruel thing to do. It enraged me and Chretien’s loyalists — and Chretien, too. Most importantly, it provided an insight into how Pierre Poilievre was, we felt.

Can a leopard change its spots? Not usually. Not in politics. By the time they reach the age of 40, I’d tell my fellow strategists, they are who they are. They don’t change.

Pierre Poilievre is 45 years old. The approach of power, I thought, had — improbably — made him the exception to my rule. He had changed. He had grown. He seemed to finally understand that politics was a game of addition, not subtraction.

Well, the people of Carleton riding felt otherwise. Perhaps they were still angry about the convoy nonsense. Perhaps they didn’t like the fulminating about vaccine mandates. Perhaps they just felt Pierre Poilievre too closely resembled Donald Trump — in policies, in manner, in style.

Whatever the reason, they made a fateful decision. And the Conservative Party of Canada should heed the important lesson they have been taught. Which is:

Time for Pierre to go.