FLESH WOUNDS

Black Knight: I'm invincible!
King Arthur: ...You're a loony.
~Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It must be all the Oscar buzz that has me on a bit of a movie kick recently. Last week I compared Stephen Harper to the Cleavon Little character, Sheriff Bart, in Blazing Saddles and now I am comparing Ontario Conservative leader John Tory to the Black Knight of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame.

Tory suffered another potentially fatal political wound on Saturday when delegates to the Ontario Progressive Conservative convention gave tepid approval of his leadership, with only 2/3rd’s of eligible voters choosing not to have a leadership review. This was the latest in a series of near mortal blows that Tory has suffered, yet he says he will fight on.

Why?

The PC leader has a losing record when it comes to elections in Ontario. He lost the Toronto’s mayoralty race to David Miller in 2003. As leader of the Ontario’ Conservatives he lead a disastrous campaign that saw the PC’s go from potentially forming the next government to being soundly thrashed by Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals. In that election, Tory even lost his own riding.

Tory could counter that he has three victories under his belt.

He won the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2004 and the next year entered Queen’s Park after a by-election win. He also called the vote over the weekend a “large majority of support.”

Let’s take a closer look at those “wins”.

The leadership contest pitted a moderate Tory against neo-cons like Frank Klees and Jim Flaherty. During the leadership campaign Klees talked of a privatizing healthcare and Flaherty wanted to lock-up the homeless. That made Tory more the safe, if not the right (no pun intended), choice.

For his by-election win, it was in a riding previously held by Tory’s leadership predecessor Ernie Eves, who won the riding when the incumbent stepped aside to give Uncle Ernie an easier path back to the legislature. It is considered one of the safest Conservative ridings in Ontario. In fact, the man who stepped aside for Eves, David Tilson, is now that riding’s MP.

As for the “win” on the weekend, Tory, after hemming and hawing for a couple of hours, finally announced he would stay on. The less than overwhelmingly endorsement of his leadership by the grassroots was not exactly reinforced when less than a quarter of the Conservative Caucus immediately urged Tory to stay. With less than 80% approval most leaders would call for the review themselves.

In my humble opinion, the fact that Tory is staying on says one of two things. The party believes he is the best choice to lead them, or that the party believes there is no one else who could. In other words, the leadership pool of the former “Big Blue Machine” is so shallow that they have no choice but to stay with the Charlie Brown of Ontario politics.

Like the Black Knight, Tory seems oblivious to the fact that he is being hacked to bits and instead of using the 3 ½ years before the next election wisely, the PC’s seem content to followed a whittled down leader.

Perhaps because they have no alternative.