Be wary of ‘virtue signalling’, push good policy instead, Conservatives told
WINNIPEG — Don’t just oppose. Instead, propose.
That’s the political plan ahead for the Conservatives this fall, and there’s a reason Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer is going to repeat it to his MPs a lot in the coming months.
When the party hired Australian conservative strategist Brian Loughnane to review what went wrong for them in the 2015 election, one thing he told them was that they had failed to give people fresh reasons to keep voting for the party. In turn, Scheer made the need for positive policy a centrepiece of his leadership campaign.
In pulling together the party’s fall strategy session this year, the party sought out Loughnane again, asking him to address the caucus at their retreat this week in Winnipeg. This time, it wasn’t for advice on what Conservatives did wrong, but how they can set things right.