In our parliamentary system, it is both the most powerful and the most misunderstood body. The least transparent too. But she can make and break a prime minister. It is the caucus of MPs from the party that has the majority in Parliament.
These days, it’s the caucus of MPs from the Coalition avenir Québec that is forcing François Legault’s hand a little so that he goes ahead with a significant and unpopular increase in the salaries of MPs – which occurs at most wrong time for a government preparing to negotiate with public sector employees.
But sometimes a prime minister decides it’s best to make sure his caucus is solidly behind him, especially when a government is in trouble and embarking on difficult and complicated reforms. And if it costs a pay rise, we’ll work it out.
Unfortunately, Mr. Legault did a poor job of defending the salary increase, but the important thing is that the caucus is happy.
All parties have caucus meetings. It discusses strategy, questions to raise, the political situation in general and the life of the party in particular. But it is the caucus of the ruling party that is the most powerful since it could – theoretically, in any case – fire the Prime Minister.
Don’t worry, it won’t happen soon, it’s not so much our political mores.
But if the caucus is not happy, it can make the Prime Minister’s life very unpleasant. And he would indeed have the right to force a vote of confidence in the House, which could make him lose his majority.
Obviously, an extreme situation would be needed, but caucus revolts do exist. Thus, just last summer, the British Prime Minister Liz Truss will have been in office for only 50 days (including 10 when nothing happened due to national mourning after the death of the Queen… ) before her caucus fired her outright and demanded a new leadership race. His disastrous budget (the first and the last!) had not passed the caucus test. Neither markets nor public opinion for that matter.
In Ottawa, Conservative MPs got the head of their leader Erin O’Toole shortly after the last election campaign. A few decades ago, Jean Chrétien had a hard time staying in office when supporters of Paul Martin wanted his head. In the end, he did not resign, but had to promise that his term would be his last. And he took to calling his caucus the “Nervous Nellies,” which was no compliment…
In Quebec, in the last months of René Lévesque’s second term, the supporters of Pierre Marc Johnson were numerous enough to make caucus meetings rather difficult for the Prime Minister and several deputies believed that this precipitated the departure of the founder of the Party. Quebec.
In the National Assembly, caucuses most often meet on Wednesday evenings, behind closed doors, and all members of the party have the right to speak and can comment on all subjects and, in the case of the party in power, to comment on the work of ministers and the Prime Minister. And they rarely deprive themselves of it. The trade-off is that what happens in caucus stays in caucus. It really takes a very difficult situation for parliamentary reporters to hear about a more heated meeting.
No wonder several prime ministers took jealous care of their caucus and managed to get through very difficult crises with the unreserved support of their MPs.
Brian Mulroney was a virtuoso in the matter, he played caucus like Yehudi Menuhin played the violin!
This is no doubt what explains why relatively few Conservative MPs followed Lucien Bouchard to the Bloc Québécois after the failure of the Meech Lake accord and the constitutional crisis that followed. Jean Charest – who learned politics under Mulroney – applied the same recipes when he became premier in Quebec.
It means all kinds of little things. Remember not only the birthday of each MP, but also of their spouses and children. If someone in the family ended up in the hospital, the Prime Minister’s bouquet of flowers sometimes preceded that of the spouse.
It may seem trivial or unimportant, but small touches like these create vital bonds between the leader and his MPs. And the Prime Minister needs it for another reason. Its deputies, if they do their job well, can be its eyes and ears in the field.
A modest suggestion: if students of political science are looking for a subject, this central institution of our parliamentary system has been studied very little over the years.