SOME politicians seem to be blessed with a non-stick coating that prevents scandal from attaching itself to them. Sooner or later, most of them find that the Teflon rubs off. For Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister of Canada, that moment may have arrived on May 15th with the news that his chief of staff, Nigel Wright, wrote a personal cheque for C$90,172 ($87,240) to clear the allegedly fraudulent expense claims of Mike Duffy, a Conservative senator.
Since that day, Mr Harper has been grilled relentlessly by the opposition parties and the media about what he knew and when he knew it. Neither the passage of time nor Mr Wright’s resignation on May 19th has dulled the attack. A poll on May 31st showed that only 13% of Canadians believe Mr Harper’s repeated claims that he knew nothing of Mr Wright’s gift until it made the news. Two-thirds considered the episode an ethical breach—bad news for the Conservatives, who sold themselves as a clean alternative to the scandal-plagued Liberals they replaced. Those same Liberals are now ahead of both the Conservatives and the New Democratic Party (NDP) in opinion polls.
Mr Harper has sailed through similar tempests in the past with barely a knock to his popularity or the standing of the Conservative Party. He persuaded the governor-general to close parliament twice: once in 2008 when his then-minority government was in danger of collapsing, and again the following year when he and his ministers were under fire for covering up evidence that Canada knew detainees turned over to Afghan authorities were likely to be tortured. Yet the Conservatives still won a majority in the 2011 election.
Why is the latest scandal sticking when previous ones were so easily wiped away? Some of the answer lies with the prime minister’s history of centralising power in his office (a complaint also made about many of his predecessors) and of putting his personal mark on government. Departments have been told to use “The Harper Government” instead of “The Government of Canada” on news releases. The content is vetted by the Privy Council Office, the prime minister’s department, before the releases are sent out. The downside of this branding is that Mr Harper finds it difficult to distance himself when something goes wrong.