The Canadian Conservative party just elected another dud as its leader. Boris in the UK is hopeless. Judith Collins in NZ is impotent. Scott Morrison in Australia is an ambitious Machiavellian imposter who would sell his own grandmother to keep his hold on power. Conservatives across the west are apparently unable to find anyone who comes close to (for example) Margaret Thatcher, or Robert Menzies, or even Sid Holland in New Zealand.

They’re all belly crawling wimps ready to prostrate themselves to a contemptible crooked partisan media and never taking a stand on things important.

In Canada, Conservatives just elected a guy called Erin O’Toole to lead the party. He campaigned for the leadership by framing himself as a “true blue” conservative, implying that his rivals were not real conservatives. He has has denounced the far-right, stating that they do not belong in his party.

Here though is the bottom line on his professed “conservatism”.

He has said climate change is a global problem which requires a global solution. O’Toole has committed to meeting Canada’s Paris Agreement targets and has said he will partner with the provinces to do so. He supports ending Canada’s energy imports from outside North America. He supports net-zero emissions legislation as long as he considers it to “support Canadian industry” and has stated that he would like to partner with and pressure organizations to lower their emissions, including helping oil companies become carbon neutral.

So he’s really just another dopey idiot who wants to turn the Conservative Party into the Green left. On the upside, his green advocacy has already provoked resistance in his own party.

He wanted to include the phrase “climate change is real” in the party’s platform. A raft of objections caused him to call for a party vote on the issue and he lost. Fifty four per cent of the party voted against the inclusion of the clause.

Conservative leaders dragging their parties to the green left side of politics need to look at the emphatic win by Labour in West Australia. As a result of last weeks election Mark McGowan’s state Labour party holds 57 seats in parliament out of a possible 59.

Knowledgeable political pundits put his win down to two main factors. One is he managed the Covid19 crisis well by closing West Australia’s borders. No lockdowns, none of that stuff. The open economy boomed, the stadiums had crowds of thousands, the nightclubs danced, and the weddings rolled on. Voters loved him for it.

Two is he rejected green left policies associated with climate change, while the “conservative” opposition embraced them (especially anti-coal) during their campaign. In West Australia the Liberals sounded like the Greens, and the Labor Party were speaking like climate skeptics.

Can the Conservatives learn from Mark McGowan’s win. Seems doubtful. They’re apparently determined to learn the hard way.