On February 6 2006, Stephen Harper became the first Canadian Conservative premier for 12 years having united the opposition and ran a strong campaign which included a "policy a day" initiative (British Conservatives take note). He has now been in power for 400 days.
Stephen Harper is a trained economist and before becoming a national leader many thought that he was more suited to being a backroom boy. His successful spell in charge has rebuffed this notion and he has a keen group of young conservative supporters many of whom share Stephen's passion for ice hockey.
Toronto Tories are a group of students. Purpletory is from Ontario, aged eighteen and is a keen rock fan. BC Tory is another youngster and has been going since 2005. Darkbluetory and Saskatory both started blogging in the month when Stephen Harper gained power.
Don't know what the deal is with all these colours, but my favourite name of the lot is the prolific Red Tory. There's a very interesting thread going at his place about Harper's lack of appeal to women.
3 comments:
Hey Prague Tory,
Quite cool that you mention Stephen Harper, he is a very good politician and has done some quite sterling work in dragging the Canadian Conservatives into the 21st century, with his recent pronouncements concerning Quebec being an indication of this.
Of course, this isn't the traditional Canadian Conservative Party of old, but the merger of a series of parties that came out of the great Conservative split after the electoral collapse in the 1990s. Based intellectually and physically in the western provinces, it has a much more libertarian agenda and has moved away from the statist expenditure of the Liberals, who have never ceased to amaze me in 32 years of living as to how hard they try to reduce and nullify Canada's global influence.
Canada was a genuine power between 1945 and 1960, but a series of poor military and industrial decisions have made the nation appear to those outside as the 51st station of the Union. This is not the case and the election of Stephen Harper from a Conservative Party that has a sovereign membership (unlike that in the UK) will bring Canada back to the prominence it deserves.
I think the Conservatives in the UK have a fair bit to learn from Canada, truth be told.
Later,
Dunc.
Interesting that you got into this because one of my fellow bloggers is hallsofmacadamia, who's a real Harper fan and so I've been following the man somewhat [and posting].
By the way, you're under the microscope this evening.
Thanks for the link. The various colours do actually have some significance, but like all political labels they can be somewhat misleading and never entirely accurate.
Harper and the "new Conservatives" are what's known here as "Blue Tories" whereas folks like myself, so-called "Red Tories" are more from the progressive side of conservatism (i.e., the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" lot).
Cheers.
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