What Cameron can learn from Canada

The Conservative Home team are currently touring the Anglosphere and reporting back on the state of conservatism in these countries. This week’s report is on Canada under Stephen Harper (pictured) and makes for interesting reading considering the Tories current predicament. After all the Canadian Conservatives came back from a defeat far more crushing than 1997.

To my mind, the key lesson the Tories can draw on from the Harper-led Conservative revival is his success in building internal coalitions on issues. This is something that the Cameron project has been bad at. For instance, lots of Tory members are inherently suspicious of all the talk of global warming. Yet, Team Cameron has made little use of the energy security arguments that are a natural compliment to  the environmental case for reducing carbon emissions and are appealing to precisely those who are doubtful of the science. Considering that the primary Tory expert on energy security is also one of the darlings of the right, Liam Fox, this seems particularly foolish.