More than just a case of cold feet, the prospect of a potential Conservative majority victory apparently helped convince former Tory premier Bernard Lord to take a pass at running for a New Brunswick seat in the May 2 election.
The word in Tory circles is that Lord’s widely known interest in challenging Liberal incumbent Brian Murphy for Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe waned as the possibility increased that he would subsequently spend four years watching his back while cooling his leadership heels on Parliament Hill.
Serving in someone else’s cabinet never comes easily to a former premier. To do so for a full term under a prime minister with a well-deserved reputation for seeing himself as something more than being first among equals around the cabinet table could be a big challenge.
For each strong minister, such as finance’s Jim Flaherty, who has flourished under Stephen Harper’s rule, there are a significant number of others who have moved on over the past five years — including David Emerson, Jim Prentice and, just recently, Stockwell Day.
Lord has flirted with a run for the federal leadership in the past, making him a bit of a Hamlet-style figure in the eyes of many Tories, but to his persistent and faithful admirers he is the groom-in-waiting of the Conservative movement.
A word-perfect bilingual centrist with roots in Quebec and Atlantic Canada — two regions that Harper has so far struggled to bring in fully under the Conservative tent — Lord would certainly be a solid standard-bearer for the progressive wing of the party in any succession battle.
But a Harper majority victory next month could render his credentials obsolete.
Under almost any scenario, the odds are the May 2 election will be the Conservative leader’s last.
If his party finishes second, Harper could be gone before the summer. Even if he lost the election by a whisker, his own campaign rhetoric and a dearth of allies in the House of Commons would keep his party on the opposition benches. No one expects him to want to act as chief critic to one of his current opposition rivals.
In light of Harper’s repeated calls for a majority, a third consecutive minority victory would also come across as a setback. In its wake, maintaining the same iron grip on the party and the government could turn out to be more difficult than controlling the actual Commons.
Both the scenarios of a defeat and another minority victory on May 2 would make the party more likely to look for a successor, even if it had to reach out of its elected ranks to do so. Among those on the prospective list of leadership aspirants, Lord’s mix of regional background, language proficiency and political pedigree is unique.
But a majority victory could have the opposite effect. It would demonstrate that one can craft a national majority from the Reform flank of the Conservative party — a first in the party’s modern history that would likely deny the return of the pendulum toward the former Progressive Conservatives.
And then, anyone who seriously expects Harper to climb his way to a majority only to sit on his laurels while his ministers organize for his succession is almost certainly deluded.
If there was ever a leader who was not predisposed to fade away in office, it is Harper. In light of his character, chances are he would rather be a dead duck than a lame duck.
Empowered with a majority, Harper would have a free hand to turn his third term into a transformative mandate, without having to worry about getting himself or the party re-elected.
As Pierre Trudeau’s, Brian Mulroney’s and Jean Chrétien’s successors discovered, it is not easy to pick up the pieces left behind by a legacy-seeking predecessor.
Unless Lord is inclined to become Harper’s Kim Campbell, a Conservative majority next month could make his latest near-launch in the federal arena the last one.
Chantal Hébert is a syndicated columnist for The Toronto Star.