NO ROOM FOR NONCONFORMISTS

  The worst part of being on the outs with the leadership is not the lost perks or privileges. In my interviews, current and former politicians informed me that the truly horrible bit is how political teammates treat nonconformists. Many members of a political team who praise ministers feel a duty to shun outcasts. Hardcore partisans and leader loyalists will be furious and/or deeply disappointed. Some will keep a distance so as not to jeopardize their own prospects of promotion. It can be difficult to distinguish them from those who find the whole matter too awkward to deal with.
   The stories that some politicians across Canada shared with me about the downsides of team discipline are disconcerting. Social shunning can be very painful for those on the receiving end: a lack of eye contact, avoided conversation, people sitting on another side of the room, not being invited to come along for lunch or a drink, and so forth. Outside of caucus meetings, people in positions of power communicate their seething displeasure by ignoring phone calls and being slow to respond to messages. Fortunately, some parliamentarians who disagree with a renegade’s actions will nevertheless go out of their way to be kind, which is a pleasant contrast to those who hide behind a mask of fake smiles. But for the most part, being socially ostracized within a political team is the hardest part of going rogue — and the hurt is largely internalized because the timeworn principle of caucus confidentiality means the poor treatment cannot be publicly discussed.
   Occasionally, independent thinkers bristle at the confines of party affiliation. Usually mavericks are lone wolves who gradually became isolated from the team. Months of fruitless internal agitation and social pinpricks erupt in a public outburst that marks the end of the parliamentarian’s time with the party. Those who can’t stomach the public worship of their party leader and the party line have a few options available to them: they can wait until someone else takes the helm; they can wreak havoc internally through various forms of civil disobedience and destabilizing the leader’s authority; they can sit as independents; cross the floor to another party; or relinquish their seat. On occasion a cluster of dissidents leave together to form their own parliamentary group to express a leadership breakdown, such as the Democratic Representative Caucus that split from the Canadian Alliance in 2001 or Québec Debout, which splintered off from the Bloc Québécois in 2018.