"Westminster Conservatism"
Like it or not, Conservatism in the non-US Anglosphere is going to hit a brick wall so long as MAGA Republicanism is seen as the "global standard-bearer" of the brand. Time to differentiate.
Whether you choose to go to a physical retailer or through a website, when you undertake to purchase a program for your computer, you are inevitably asked an introductory question – Mac or PC?
Of course, most of us understand that while a program – like Microsoft Word, or another – has essentially the same look and end user experience when you’re trying to type a letter, article or essay, the background code is not the same. Try running a Mac version on your PC, or vice versa, and you will not have a good outcome or pleasant time of it.
That said, if you owned a Mac, would you still insist on using the PC version because “that’s what most people use” or “I just prefer a Windows product”? Well, you could insist on doing that out of secondary and tertiary preferences, but you won’t get any work done.
Political ideologies are similar to this, made up of the background coding you don’t see and the interface that you do. And while a person may be forgiven for looking at two side-by-side screens and thinking they are completely identical, the background instructions they run on tell a slightly different story.
Conservatism is for most people an end user activity – the blank screen where you can push any matter of buttons and click on an icon to get what you want done. And if the conservatism in two different jurisdictions manifests itself as two identical screens on the machines, then you reason that they are fully identical and interchangeable.
But political ideology is also heavily driven by the operating system – the type of government, legal framework and constitutional arrangements, combined with the characteristics, history and shared experiences of the people who call it home.
In this respect, Canadian and American conservatism are versions of the same software, designed specifically for their respective operating systems – comparative outcomes of personal freedom, limited government, and personal responsibility generated by different processes.
The United States is not a constitutional monarchy that was founded - as Prime Minister Carney has said – as a partnership between English, French and Indigenous peoples. Conversely, we didn’t revolt but gradually evolved a system of government based on the Westminster model. The powers of a Premier are not an exact match to an American Governor. Our Prime Minister is not the Head of State, and – contrary to the thoughts of drunk people pulled over by a policeman at 2am – there is no legal remedy that allows you to plead the First, Second or Fifth of anything.
These differences, while mostly procedural, are the rituals and shibboleths of the system. They may be markedly different than those used by the Americans, they nonetheless run in a way to create comparative outcomes.
In normal circumstances, these differences seem to be esoteric – and too much “inside baseball.” And in a world where trade wars and annexation are not imaginable topics of conversation, it would remain so. But that is not where we are.
And the differences are not superficial. I’m the sole Protestant in a Catholic household, and while we are all “Christian” and there are a myriad of similarities, I would be lying if I said there were elements of a Catholic service where one does feel like a fish out of water – and other than. The reverse holds true when they might ‘cross themselves’ in a United Church sermon.
The rituals of the nation – how and why you do things – is just as important as those dramatic milestones of its historical existence, such as the remembrances of bravery on the battlefield, or the completion of a nation-building project like the Canadian Pacific railroad, or Sydney Crosby popping one in the net to propel Canada to a gold medal win at Vancouver in 2010. Even the Liberal Party, who has eschewed such manifestations over the past decade, extended the invitation for His Majesty King Charles III to open Parliament at the end of the month.
But as in the economy, market dominance forces a harmonization as a near-monopoly player seeks to mold customers and competitors alike to their benefit. It’s why people routinely call searching on the web “googling” even if they don’t use Google to do it or call all snowmobiles “Ski-doos” or all facial tissues “Kleenex.” And its why conservatism so often gets interpreted through an American lens – even outside the borders of the US with nary an American in sight.
The United States, being the preeminent nation in the expression of both hard and soft power – has the ability to ‘standardize’ products and concepts simply through the force of presence and market share. Watch enough television and news and you are subtlety inculcated in the coding of their system – including the previously mentioned numbered amendments. Familiarity combined with similarity leads to a glossing over of real and substantive differences.
The conservative movement in Canada has had to tend with this issue more than most – either internally with a small, but vocal segment of its base, or externally when Liberal opponents take to the campaign trail to assert that Canadian conservatives are simply a branch plant operation for the Republicans to the south. Two of the last three elections saw the Liberals fight under the premise that a Conservative government would implement the same policies as their American cousins, while the third – most recent – vote had the inference that Conservatives were not as committed to the nation’s independence and sovereignty. One can counter that the flip from “post-national country” to chest-thumping, flag-waving “elbows up” nationalism was a blatantly cynical political tactic, but identifying the means by which one loses an election is not the same as finding a remedy to deal with it.
The answer is not to lean into the affinities with an American conservatism that is so seized by the current MAGA mindset, nor is it to try to divine some mythical “Red Toryism” of yesteryear as a magical antidote. Both are short-term reactions to current events that will satisfy few beyond a small core and leave the movement even weaker.
The better course would be for Canadian conservatives and those in countries with a compatible “operating system” to cooperate and consult to create a distinct brand of conservatism that works for all concerned - a “Westminster Conservatism” compatible with how we do business, how we run our lives.
Consider that the Australian election that occurred 6 days after the Canadian vote was almost a carbon copy of it. A conservative party that enjoyed a massive lead in the polls, that failed to respond to the challenge posed by Trump’s foreign and trade policy moves, resulting in the re-election of a previously unpopular incumbent centre-left party, the defeat of the conservative leader in his own constituency, and the defeat of the leader of the third party. This says nothing of the situation in Britain, which is replicating Canada in 1993 – including a “Reform Party” led by an individual who has publicly counted Preston Manning as an inspiration.
American conservatism is a creature of its environment – one where the United States is “exceptional” and considers itself the gold standard of western liberal democracy. There has always been an element within their movement that has viewed its Anglosphere cousins as a quaint curiosity or a pale imitator. That element has been emboldened and empowered by the MAGA movement, and for the foreseeable future those beyond its borders will always be accused of “not doing conservatism right” because we don’t place the interests of the United States ahead of those of our own countries. They truly see us as some generic, knock-off version of what a real conservative is – and yet this “enlightened” state of conservatism they assert means turning one’s back on our own history, our own experiences, our own systems of government and the national interest.
We cannot change the course of American conservatism – particularly in this moment – but we can resolve to clearly define a conservatism that works for us, and within the system of our own choosing. Talking amongst ourselves and our CANZUK cousins is a good first step.
To be clear, good ideas can come from anywhere, and the idea of sealing ourselves off from the world is not the point of this argument. But like the software you install on your device, it needs to be compatible with the operating system for it to be of any use. Collaborating with others who run the same philosophical version on the same institutional OS would be a good start.
That and brushing up on your George Grant and Marshall McLuhan for good measure.