No mo' Bo Jo!
I rarely tweet, but last night, when the Canadian Conservative party announced the removal from the leadership "race" of Patrick Brown I could not resist asking:
"What could be unethical enough to get a candidate thrown out of a competition that is entirely based on the buying and selling of votes by the tens of thousands? -- @cmedmoore
The removal from office by the British Conservative MPs of Prime Minister Boris Johnson will presumably have no influence on coverage and analysis of the endless trainwreck of the leadership struggles of the Canadian Conservative party. Nothing ever does suggest to our punditti that the Canadian way of leadership needs to be reconsidered.
The British leadership decision will involve the party caucus choosing two candidates for the office, followed by a vote by existing Conservative party membership holders (no sales; by and large no campaign).
It's a compromise and a dumb one. Boris Johnson would never have been selected in the first place, and his whole farcical faux-populist tenure avoided, had MPs retained final authority and made the choice themselves -- as had always been the rule in parliamentary democracies all over the world, other than Canada.
The Canadian disease has not entirely conquered Britain. The British leadership selection will be done in a few weeks and cost almost nothing, compared to months and millions here. But it's spreading.
