The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Can Bojo Survive A Coup, And If So, What Should Erin O'Toole Learn From It?

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

The British Prime Minister may think he can ride out the storm but those against him haven't stopped organizing.  What does it mean and what should it mean for Erin O'Toole?  Andrew MacDougall should know -- Stephen Harper's former head of communications and currently a strategic consultant based in London.  Also today, will it soon be time for single pilot cockpits?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Can Boris Johnson survive? Whether he can or he can't, are there lessons for Aaron O'Toole? That, in a moment. And hello there, once again, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. We got snow. We got a fair amount of snow. Looking out the window once again, and it's still there. Plows are out all night.

But nothing. You didn't see the premier out here shoveling snow in Stratford. Not us. We're hardy. We know what snow's like. We know what to do with it. Now, mind you, we didn't have anywhere near as much as Toronto had. But it's winter. It's January. Come on. What do you expect to happen? Anyway, enough about winter snow. You know, if you've listened to this podcast or if you followed my career, I love politics. I love watching the politicians

going at each other, sometimes from within their own parties, moves around leadership, moves around policy, moves around the issues. And it's not just Canadian politics I love. I've always been fascinated by American politics, especially in the last few years. And I've always been fascinated by British politics as well. I was born in Britain. I've reported lots from Britain.

I spent a couple of summers, 86 and 87, in London, filling in for the correspondent at that time, covering British politics. So I've always been engaged on the political front and those moments when there seems to be a crisis a lot of tension and people wondering what's going to happen have always been fascinating to me and therefore i found it fascinating in these past couple of weeks to be following the boris johnson story i've actually found the Boris Johnson story fascinating for years, running back to when he was mayor of London. But he's in deep doo-doo right now.

How deep and what will happen? Well, we're going to talk about that today. And we're especially going to talk about what impact that could have in Canada on the Canadian Conservative Party. Are there similarities to the situations that Boris Johnson's in with his caucus and Aaron O'Toole is in with his caucus? So when you have those kind of topics to discuss, you need somebody who's an expert in both, right?

Who understands the story from both ends. So it didn't take me long to determine who I should call. He's been a guest on this program before. You've read his commentaries and heard his commentaries as a freelance writer out of London in any number of different journalistic organizations. But he's also a senior consultant with Trafalgar Strategy based in London, England,

who consult with various companies on various issues. We're talking about Andrew McDougall here, the former head of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. So he understands what it's like to be in a position like that. He understands conservative politics on both sides of the ocean. And he was more than willing to have a chat. And so that's exactly what we did with the focus being about the future

of one Boris Johnson. So let's listen to the conversation with andrew mcdougall all right andrew can boris johnson survive i i think that the feeling here peter is that he's starting to think that he can survive uh the big hurdle for him is this report into his conduct and the conduct of his office it's being done by a senior public servant named Sue Gray. That's tipped to be coming this week or possibly early next. And that is the thing that a lot of reluctant supporters of his, both within cabinet and within the party, are waiting to see before they decide whether they give a shove at the door. So we'll know in a week's time for sure.

But he's starting to think, based on the weekend, that he can skate through. So what happened on the weekend that's giving him that reason to think that? Well, I think, Peter, I think the thing is what didn't happen. You didn't have the Sunday papers over here are notorious for kind of coming up with these big exclusives that just destroy the government's week. And there wasn't any of that. there were no new party revelations there were no new scandals so i think some mps took comfort from that and the mps were back in their constituencies and their reports back seem to be that that while people are are angry it's not the white hot rage that they've seen at other points during COVID, most particularly when Dominic Cummings, Johnson's former chief of staff, broke the COVID guidelines

very early on in the pandemic. So they're not seeing that, which gives them a bit of comfort as well. But of course, given that Mr. Cummings is behind these leaks and revelations about the parties, nobody's quite sure that he's done shivving his former boss. He just doesn't stop, does he? I mean, he's remarkable in that sense. Yeah, remarkable in that I think everybody who's dealt with him and knows him knows that once he gets fixated on destroying something, whether that's the EU or in this case, Boris Johnson, he won't stop until he's done. But what's striking for me as somebody who used to work for prime minister is just, you just don't do this. You know, you are in the circle of trust. You know, a lot of things that the general public doesn't know. You've seen how well the sausage is made. You just don't go kind of waving that information around to cripple your

former boss. It's's it's just not polite um but hell hath no fury like like a coming scorned uh and we're seeing that now what's the motivation for him is it all self-interest i think there's a bit of that i think he's he's obviously someone with an ego but i think he's just somebody who looks at the prime minister as he was a vehicle to advance interests that were closer to his heart, namely kind of getting out of the over the aisles and from this side to that side with kind of no fixed point. And I think he resents that. And I think he thinks that the post-Brexit opportunity is being squandered, that the pandemic wasn't dealt with properly

because Boris Johnson is just kind of philosophically opposed to restrictions and lockdowns and things like that. So I think there's a bit of a personal, I think there's a lot of policy and there's a lot of frustration at the blown opportunity that leaving the EU was supposed to bring to Britain. As somebody like you, as the kind of behind the scenes political experience that you do, you know,

that one of the things that can help at a time that you're in the spotlight, that you're the focus of attention is for other stories to sort of crowd into the way to kind of take you off the front pages, which may have been part of what happened over the weekend. A couple of things I found interesting. I mean, obviously, the Prince Andrew thing is there. The Djokovic thing was there. but also they kind of dropped the whole BBC thing on the weekend, which got a lot of play in Britain because it's the BBC and because everybody contributes to it in terms of the tax on the BBC license fee. I found it interesting, obviously, because of the CBC and the continuing debate about whether the CBC in this country, is that the BBC issue, is it such a powerful issue that it can blow a story like Johnson off the front pages in days when there is no seeming finality to it yeah i think the short answer

peter is yes but more importantly it is one issue that unites the conservative support whether you're a johnsonian conservative you know whether you're more on the rishi sunak liz trusts kind of that's right end of things is this kind of feeling that the bbc um is not fit for purpose anymore or an anachronism in an age where there's so much choice out there. And I think that's why it's being deployed.

You know, they called it in the paper here, Operation Red Meat, because in the UK, everything has to have a stupid title like that. But it was Red Meat for the base to get them all going, yeah, this is why i voted tory yeah screw the bbc yeah let's let's clip their wings let's freeze their settlement let's do all that so yes and in nadine dorries who is the the culture minister here responsible for the bbc

is one of johnson's most determined allies and dogged allies will defend him to the end they call her mad nad over here and she's been sent on kind of a kamikaze mission against the bbc um for all the reasons we're talking about because it just gets people excited and and they think it needs to be done so we're told to expect more of this there was some talk about bringing the army in to try to clamp down on the on the channel migrants that have been a problem here using things like like sonar blasters to kind of you know knock these boats off course and being a lot harder that's in the same vein of kind of trying to unite conservatives against a problem that every conservative uh regardless of affiliation within the party wants to be solved

that issue of migrants continuing to come across the channel. And I'm sure they'll have another one or two up their sleeve to try to get him beyond this. But I think what that misses, Peter, is that people are a bit smarter than that. And at the end of the day, Johnson's gone from a position of polling strength, being up to 10, 15 points, consistently, reliably, to now being behind by that same margin and conservative mps are very practical people they know that at those numbers they're going back to opposition or at best a coalition and that's what will drive their decision not is a desperate prime minister throwing out some chum that they can support they think they'll get that policy regardless of who's in charge and if they think that the leader can't take them there anymore and let's not forget johnson's entire appeal is his his relatability to the general population and

public and if he loses that he loses what makes him different to anybody else and we're at that point now where where it's lost uh and and i'm not sure kicking the bbc uh will be enough to get it back you know it's interesting you bring up this point about it, you know, Johnson's connection with the people, because one of your colleagues, Charles Kenningham, at the Trafalgar Strategy, the founder, I guess, of Trafalgar Strategy, was saying the other day that Boris's value to the Conservative Party is his ability to connect with the British public, as you just mentioned. But recent polling and conversations on social media

show it's now derision and anger that elicits from the lay population. Can he turn this around? Boris has always beaten the odds, but they are now longer than ever. Yeah, and I think that's where most people have met it out, is that you now see people actively campaigning behind the scenes to replace him. So, you know, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have feelers out. People like Jeremy Hunt, who ran against Boris Johnson the last time, had to deny that he was in the race today. And you see promising newcomers like Nadim Zahawi, who was the vaccines minister before being moved to education,

starting to kind of have those soft soundings and taps on the shoulders in the tea room. So that kind of what they call here being on maneuvers. So that's always a feature of certainly the Conservative Party in Britain. So, yeah, I think people have sensed that that that bond has been broken and people liked Boris for being just like them, but they don't like him being just like them in that he's a hypocrite. And that, despite all the kind of clutter of this policy, that policy, the hypocrisy is very simple to understand. And in a time when everybody had given up so much collectively,

to then see that the biggest, most powerful office in the land was treating it all as a bit of a joke and not observing the rules just cuts people the wrong way. You listed off quite a run of names there as potentials, as people who might be considered as future leaders, future prime ministers. Do any of those names have this in any way the same connection with the people that johnson used to have before he became leader i mean he was always seen as the likely successor um is there a likely successor today or is it really that sort of jumble of names that any of them could jump forward yeah there is no likely successor peter which is why you know talk of johnson's demise might be a

bit premature is that you know it takes time to organize get your people together but there is no one alternative rishi sunak excites a lot of people but he's also been complicit in a lot of the fiscal expansion which the thatcherite side here doesn't like the fact that the government's become such a big spending, can't say no to anybody type person. But he's also, you know, having said that, been tainted by tax rises that are going to be coming in April to national insurance, that's our version of employment insurance. You know, heating bills in the VAT on top of those was talking about getting rid of that that hasn't happened um so so the chancellor's in money finding mode

now which makes it hurt a bit liz trust is the one that the conservative membership likes the most but you know as we've seen you know what what the membership wants is not exactly what the general public wants whether that's in canada with aaron'Toole and the Conservatives or whether it's Jeremy Corbyn and Labour here. You know, you can have a party leader that's really supported by the membership that doesn't get over or relate at all to the general public. And I think that's what the Tories here will have to figure out is who has that mainstream appeal. And that's why a name like Nadim Zahawi who isn't well known outside of britain it's compelling he came to britain at the age of nine not speaking a word of english and worked himself up and got himself through school started a polling company got involved in politics and has done quite a credible job i mean it that's the story that our societies like

to tell itself are possible about immigrants succeeding and kind of making it all the way so that's the most compelling personal story amongst the contenders. And then you have people like Jeremy Hunt who just go, look, I know how to do government. I might be boring, but boring is a bit of what we need right now after the kind of insanity. So we'll see. It'll be wild. I can tell you that. You know, you're a conservative, obviously, with a great pedigree within that party,

but you've never been shy about criticizing when criticism was warranted, or at least you felt it was warranted. And you've taken a few shots at the Canadian conservative leader, Aaron O'Toole, in the last little while as you monitor the situation in Canada. I'm wondering when you look at Aaron O'Toole, who seems to just sort of bounce from one kind of mini crisis to another, even when he's trying to deflect to get off his own issues and on to focusing on the government. When you look at him and his situation, are there any parallels to what's going on now in Britain? Or are there any lessons he can learn from what's going on in Britain? Because the system is different.

You know, tossing a leader is much different in Britain than it is here. But is there anything he can learn from what you're seeing there? Yeah, I think the lesson, and it's the lesson the Conservatives have refused to take since Harper went, is you have to make the party bigger. And from a very practical point in terms of membership. And if you look at Justin Trudeau, the one success that he doesn't get enough credit for is totally redoing the Liberal Party of Canada's operations, modus operandi, membership base. It made it very much his party after years of the kind of blue liberals on Bay Street kind of calling the shots around Canada. So he flipped that on its head and made it his own. Aaron O'Toole tried to do that in a general election campaign to try to broaden out

the appeal and make it a bit of a different proposition. But now that he's not in an election, he is back to satisfying the immediate priority, which is his MPs and his membership base. And that's a very different message that he has to deliver. But in delivering that message, he disqualifies himself in a lot of people's minds elsewhere. So you have to get yourself out of that trap. And I get that you have to say these things to your most fervent supporters. And leaders have always said these things. They've just said it on the rubber chicken circuit in speeches to constituency offices where it wasn't heard. Now what we do is barf it all up on social media to get the clicks and to get the shares.

And we forget, I think, sometimes that everybody can see it. And they go, like, I don't like it when you talk a bit crazy like that. It kind of weirds me out. And they have to kind of get around that and i think this is where finding issues that that are relevant to people and certainly the cost of living all the inflation stuff they're doing i think is perfect for that that's their issue because the government doesn't have an answer to it and the best they can do is go well it's a problem everywhere um but they're still the ones that are making the decision so i think they have to keep hitting that as much as they can and not talk about an environment minister doing things he's

not going to do, or he's not going to do what they're saying they're going to do and being caught out quite easily on that lie. And I think he just lacks a bit of confidence in his ability to kind of keep the herd together, which if you talk about, I talked about what made Justin Trudeau's unique in the Liberal Party. What made Stephen Harper unique is that ability to keep that tent broadly aligned and expanding at the same time to take it from minority to minority to majority. But he did that on the economy, on credibility, on steady leadership during a crisis. And you have to make the tent bigger. And that's not by being a liberal. That's by finding the issues that are out there and capitalizing on them.

And I think the economy and inflation, if I were a conservative today, advising anybody is just keep on that as long and as hard as you can. If the Canadian system was the same as the British system, where a caucus could boot out a leader, as they did with Margaret Thatcher, and as they may do here with Boris Johnson, if that system was the same in Canada, would Aaron O'Toole survive right now?

I don't think so. So here to get a leadership review, you need 15% of the parliamentary party to send in a letter to the whip's office going, I don't like this guy. So that's about 54 if memory serves for johnson at the current size of the party so 15 of aaron o'toole's herd of mps is it's just it's what about 15 people right or 20 people i think you could

easily find 15 to 20 people that have that have kind of had enough uh of him and and his either inability to to get off his own wicket or, or his inability to find an issue that unites them all. So I think he would be in trouble. Yeah. Last question on that point. What do you think? Is that a fair system? I mean, 15%, that's not much. You should be able to get 15% on almost anything. Yeah, you would think so.

But this is where, you know, I think if you look at 2019 and the result in the British election that got Johnson his majority, I think every conservative MP knows that they wrote his coattails on that. So I think there's some residual loyalty there to stop taking that final step but but look you know that i think it enforces discipline in a sense but it also forces a leader to be responsive and i think that ultimately is the greater good in a system where in canada i think the problem is people can't challenge the leader at all. I mean, look at the liberal caucus.

Do you think anybody says a crossword to Justin Trudeau about anything ever? I mean, it's certainly hard to find a scenario where they've spoken up. Well, I mean, I guess Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott did, and look what happened there. But you don't get a lot of that. Whereas here you get constant challenges to the prime minister from the back bench, from cabinet. It's not unusual for there to be a rebellion in the House.

You know, Boris had 100 and some MPs vote against him on coronavirus restrictions. That kind of thing never happens in Canada. And I think ultimately that's better for a democratic system to have that threat of renewal and change than to have a leader that is just too strong and powerful to be moved by his elected representatives. You know, the British love their bookies. What are the bookies saying? Can he survive? No, Johnson out. And Nadeem Zahawi is the good long shot bet for people.

So make of that what you will. We'll see. We'll wait for sue gray's report and you know it while it won't be arguing for the dismissal of the prime minister its mandate is to put the facts out there and and rishi sunak and liz trust were certainly quite cagey in their in their or or non-existent in their support quote unquote of boris johnson when he apologized so so there will be vipers ready to strike if that report comes with the wrong information in it. And is she seen as truly independent in terms of writing this report? Well, I think people are smart enough to know that a public serving will never recommend

the ultimate political sanction to a political master because the system is set up where the politicians have the accountability and quite rightly it will, you know, I compare it to a bit like the Mueller report in the States, you know, Mueller led the horses to the water, but he couldn't make them drink. You know, he even wrote in his report, like, I'm not going as far as, as the the situation warrants it because you're the ones that have to take that step to go further and i think that's where we'll end up here she will put

all the facts out there i think the facts will show that johnson's explanation about not knowing that a party uh twitch's own office sent out an invite to 100 people telling them to bring their own booze but it was legitimately a work event i think the british public had passed their judgment on that and and even if she doesn't black and white catch him out on that i think the british public's made its mind and and said i don't believe you anyway so so it could be that the entire conservative party is then offside with british public opinion clinging to boris johnson and uh and we'll see which they might want to do until, because there's tax rises, I said in April, local elections in May, maybe it's a better strategy to let him eat all that

poop and then push him out in May. It'll be fascinating. Always is. Love British politics. Andrew, it's always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for this. My pleasure, Peter. Thank you. Andrew McDougall talking to us from London. And Andrew always has a way with words. He can certainly boil it down to a simple phrase at times, can't he? Okay, that's the Boris Johnson story. And we'll keep our eyes on it and follow it to see where in fact

it ends up. I'm still of the opinion that he'll survive. I know Bruce and Chantel both think he's toast. Certainly Bruce does. And we'll find out, I guess, more from him tomorrow on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Coming up though in a moment, is it time for a single pilot flying those big commercial airliners?

That's when we come back. And welcome back. This is Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Welcome from wherever you're listening. All right.

One of the most famous aircraft in the Second World War, one of many famous aircraft, but one of the most famous aircraft in the Second World War, one of many famous aircraft, but one of the most famous, I'm partial and biased on this, was the Lancaster. Right, it was a mainstay of bomber command with the RAF and the RCAF during the Second World War. There were only two left flying in the world. One's in Britain, one's in Canada, the Hamilton. Privately owned. Privately in the sense that it's not a part of the Air Force anymore. You know, it's a group of Canadians who came together,

donated money, rebuilt the plane. It's at the Heritage Museum in Hamilton, at the airport just outside of Hamilton. And it still flies, like the one in Britain. They're the only two remaining Lancasters in the world that fly. I've been very lucky. I've been up on it three times. My father, who flew Lancasters during the Second World War, the late Stanley Mansbridge,

wing commander, DFC, RAF, he got a chance to go on it, not to fly. It was still being rebuilt. And unfortunately, by the time it was flying again, my dad had passed away. But I've been on it, and so has my son has been on it, Willie.

And it's a pretty special experience. Now, one of the things that's interesting about it is when you're on it today, on that, there are two pilots up front. It's not an easy plane to fly. And there are two pilots, and there's an engineer on board. So there's always at least three crew members on board the Lancaster that flies out of Hamilton. Now during the war, there was only one pilot. And when you see the configuration on the aircraft, you'll see there's just one pilot seat. There was room for a navigator, who was usually coupled as a bomb aimer, and was in that kind of bubble in the front, often lying down, taking the various readings that he needed. And there was, I imagine, an engineer of some sort helped set the engines and monitor the

engine output and performance. But it wasn't that two pilots weren't needed, it was that they just couldn't afford to put two pilots on those planes. There was an incredible turnover rate for the RAF and the RCAF. Many people lost their lives on Lancasters that were shot down.

And if that's going to happen I guess those who were in the positions of power determined that it better to just have one pilot than two because you couldn't train them fast enough. But today there are two on that flight, which is kind of normal for those of us who travel commercially a lot. You know, you get on board the plane,

you see, well, there's two guys up there or two women up there or one man and one woman up there in the cockpit. And it gives you, I don't know, does it make you feel more safe, more secure, knowing there are two there? There's a captain and a first officer. I guess, maybe.

But two is an improvement of where it used to be, say, 30 years ago, when the big airline, well, more than 30 years ago, 50 years ago now, when the big 707s and DC-8s and then eventually the 747s and everything that's followed. But back then,

as big planes became the thing, I can remember getting on a DC-8 in Toronto to fly to Vancouver, and there were often upwards of five people in the cockpit. There were two pilots. There was a radio operator, a navigator, and a flight engineer. Five crew members. Now, over time, with automation and better equipment and fancy high-tech cockpits,

that's been reduced to two, just the pilots. But now questions are being asked at a time when the airlines are trying to find ways to cut money. How about just one? Why do you need two? Why not one? Now, there's a study done in 2014

that suggested a transition from a two-pilot cockpit to a single-pilot cockpit will be significantly more challenging than the transitions from a five-person cockpit to a two-person cockpit. The study said, properly implemented, it could provide operating cost savings while maintaining a level of safety no less than conventional two-pilot commercial operations. But how do you safely get rid of one pilot? One way is to greatly increase automation in the cockpit, devoting more tasks to computers. Another is to offload the same tasks from the cockpit to the ground, with the remaining pilot working as a member of a distributed crew. In other words, some are in the air, some are on the ground.

The latter approach seems more feasible. I'm reading this from a piece that was done on CNN. Sorry, I should have mentioned that. The latter approach seems more feasible, at least in the short term, because much of what's required

to implement already exists. Technologically, you could argue that in a lot of cases, we're already there, says Patrick Smith, an airline pilot flying Boeing 767 aircraft, and the author of the popular book and blog, Ask the Pilot. But by doing that, you eliminate certain redundancies, and I have a hard time with that because I fly airplanes for a living. And even with two pilots in the cockpit, things can become extremely busy to the point of task saturation for both pilots.

Well, no final conclusion on this, but it's interesting, isn't it, that we talk about it? It reminds me of the old joke. This is an old joke. About how one day in the future, planes would be so automated, they would need no one in the cockpit. But in fact, there would always be one pilot and one dog in the cockpit. The pilot would be there to reassure the passengers. The dog would be there to reassure the passengers. The dog would be there to bite the hand of the pilot

if he or she touched anything. Okay, you can stop laughing now. I know that was just a hilarious joke. That probably means it's time to sign off for this day tomorrow it's Wednesday smoke mirrors and the truth day Bruce Anderson will join us from Ottawa not sure what we're going to talk about yet but there's always something to talk about on Wednesdays and we look forward to that talk

the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. If you have any thoughts worthy of consideration for the Thursday mailbag, well, send them along. And then Friday, of course, good talk. Chantelle Hebert in Montreal. Bruce will be at his usual hideout in Ottawa.

So, that's it for this day. That's been The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario.

Snowy Stratford. I'll see you again in 24 hours.