Canuck Cuckservatives to hold leadership vote June 27th

The self-styled Conservative Party of Canada -- in reality only a tad to the left of centre, compared with the Liberals -- managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory [No more clichés please! Ed.] in October's general election.

Instead of stopping to think why their "Liberal lite" policies failed to stir the imagination of jaded frostbacks, party backroomers quickly plunged their knives into the back of leader Andrew Scheer -- the Mr Rogers of Canadian politics, a man with all the charisma of a bed of kelp.

Political has-been Peter MacKay waited less than a week before publicly liken Mr Scheer's performance to "having an empty net to shoot at, and missing!" (Canadians will understand that, or so Poor Len Canayen tells us.) Other verbal daggers were stuck into Mr Scheer until he was "done like dinner" (ditto), and he duly fell on his sword at the beginning of December.

Now the Tories will have to pick a new leader. Mr MacKay is said to be thinking about having another go. So is former leader Jean Charest, who has won and lost elections as both a Conservative and a Liberal. Maxime Bernier, who was screwed over by anti-French Tories and angry dairy farmers in the last Conservative convention, is not expected to be invited to throw his chapeau in the ring.

On January 3rd, the Tories announced that a leadership convention will be held in Toronto on June 27th, following which everyeone will go to the cottage for the summer. Former Harper cabinet minister Lisa Raitt, defeated in the October election and then made party chairthingy, told the meeja, "The committee is meeting frequently to make sure we do this in the most open, efficient and transparent way to make sure we get a good result this time." `nuff said.