MURRAY CAMPBELL

December 15, 2007

John Tory has been a fleeting presence around Queen's Park the past couple of months. He's been busy travelling around Ontario and getting an earful from Progressive Conservatives angry about the party's dismal performance in the Oct. 10 election.

He's back at the legislature now and ready to make a determined stand against enemies who would try to evict him from the leader's office in reprisal for leading a campaign that ran aground over his ill-considered idea to boost "faith-based schools" with public money. The mystery is just exactly how many enemies he has.

Mr. Tory's supporters admit he got his hide tanned when he met with party members in 13 cities across Ontario this fall. But they argue that these people, having vented a bit, are on side and plan to vote against having a leadership review when the matter comes up at a Conservative convention in London in February. "The snowball is not rolling," said a Tory supporter.

His critics argue that he doesn't deserve another chance because the faith-based-schools disaster showed that his judgment can't be trusted. One dissident suggested yesterday that Mr. Tory's "fatal flaw" is that he lacks political intuition.

The opposition doesn't seem to be widespread at the moment. There are a few anti-Tory websites getting a fair amount of traffic, and there was a small gathering of the disaffected over dinner in Toronto last week, but there's been nothing as overt as the "dump Dalton" movement among Liberals that plagued Dalton McGuinty after his losing 1999 election.

Complete story at the Globe and Mail (subscribers only)