Good riddance to Patrick Brown

By Jonathon Van Maren

The term “open secret” is being thrown around on Twitter a lot since former PC leader Patrick Brown’s career burned down in a matter of hours in the wake of bombshell sexual misconduct allegations and the subsequent resignation of nearly all of his top staff. Brown tearfully denied the explicit allegations, but it didn’t help—his caucus forced him to step down as leader in the early morning hours of January 25. On Monday, Brown fully expected to be Ontario’s next premier. On Wednesday, he is a nobody MPP battling sexual misconduct allegations that are probably only the beginning.

The fact that Patrick Brown is a creep was an “open secret,” and there were a lot of people trying to get people on the record and take the stories public. Myself and several others were digging into Brown’s past for over a year, and there were many of these stories circulating—but nobody would go on the record with the stories and nobody was willing to have their experiences go public. That’s why Brown’s alleged behavior and reputation remained secret from the public—until now. Nick Kouvalis, political guru and head of Campaign Research, has apparently been warning the PC Party of Patrick’s past for quite some time, but again—as long as the stories were unsubstantiated, there wasn’t much that could be done—even though there was an enormous appetite in many quarters of the party to oust Brown.

I suspect that the first two women coming forward is only the start, as stories are already proliferating on Twitter. One woman on Twitter noted that, “Those of us from Barrie know exactly what Patrick Brown is like, so unfortunately, this is not shocking at all.” Another tweet, sent out by someone claiming to be a staffer on the Hill, warned back in November already that, “If you have a daughter who is cute and was a #cpc intern when Patrick Brown was Tory MP, then you can be 100% assured that he made moves on her. Probably worse. He’s a creep. More to come!” And so there was.

The only thing about Patrick’s immolation that surprises me is that he wasn’t more prepared for it. Considering that he had to at least suspect something like this could happen, that train wreck press conference where he scurried down the hallway and was hounded by shouting reporters into a vehicle outside of Queen’s Park, pale-faced and looking as guilty as sin seems even more bizarre. But I’m not going to pretend that I’m not happy that he is finally being exposed for the fraudulent faux “feminist” that he really is.

Patrick Brown was happy to stab social conservatives in the back after courting them during his leadership race, flaunt his progressive credentials, enthusiastically vote for restrictions on free speech for pro-lifers while demanding that his caucus do the same, back liberal sex education, and march in the sections of Pride parades closest to the cameras. Brown wanted to present himself as an enlightened non-conservative conservative, one that liberals could vote for in the knowledge that he actually belonged to their side on every social issue of significance. He took great pains to prove that he wasn’t a conservative, and it turns out that all of his virtue-signalling and selling out was all for nothing. He’ll never be premier, and his career in public life will come to a sad end.

The Progressive Conservative Party has a real opportunity now—an opportunity to be an actual political party rather than a progressive parrot serving as Patrick’s puppet. Patrick Brown’s resignation letter touted his transformation of the PC Party and attempted to claim that his liberal-lite ideology and enthusiastic attacks on social conservatives and other segments of what was once the PC base is the politically winning formula, but he will no longer have any say in the Party, and considering the exodus of his staffers that took place literally while he was denying the allegations, it seems that those he brought with him to the party in order to transform it have no desire to stick around, either.

Good riddance to Patrick Brown. Without him, hopefully the PC Party can recover and move on to victory.

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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.