OTTAWA—Long-reigning governments in this country are not usually defeated. They usually defeat themselves.

They can fall through a combination of arrogance, sloppiness, ethical wanderings, voter fatigue, leadership battles, backbench revolts.

After more than seven years in office and halfway through his first majority, there are signs of all those afflictions in various states in the Stephen Harper government.

Harper has lost two ministers, John Duncan and Peter Penashue , to ethics violations in recent weeks, and the decision to quickly get his invisible but ethically-challenged intergovernmental affairs minister re-elected in a Labrador byelection checks off the arrogant, and perhaps the sloppy, boxes.

The prime minister is also about to head into a phase where policy is going to take a back seat to speculation about the future of some of his long-serving ministers, then speculation about his own future.

So, first up is the future of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who has been battling illness and has lately looked detached. Flaherty’s future will be the subject of intense speculation between now and a cabinet shuffle expected this summer.

That will be followed by speculation about Harper’s future.

If, as expected, Liberals choose Justin Trudeau as their next leader in a couple of weeks, Harper is going to start looking old, not necessarily chronologically (he is still a month from his 54th birthday) but because, should he decide to go to the voters one more time in 2015, he will be seeking four more years after nine in power.

None of this means that Harper, a skilled political tactician and student of history, will necessarily fall from any of these afflictions. This may just be a period of mid-term malaise that will be turned around by next autumn.

But his toughest battle could be brewing from within.

Last week’s tentative uprising by the once-anonymous soldiers in Harper’s caucus has many portraying this as a moment of truth for parliamentary democracy, with the freedom fighters on the backbench crusading for change in a broken system.

But it’s an open question as to whether this is a push for freedom, or a push by the pro-life caucus.

It may be a coincidence, but the gang shouting “unshackle me” — the likes of Rob Anders, Leon Benoit, Russ Hiebert, LaVar Payne, Brent Rathgeber, Kyle Seeback, Brad Trost, Mark Warawa, John Williamson and Stephen Woodworth — all voted in favour of Woodworth’s motion to strike a committee to study whether life begins at birth when it was voted on last fall.

Its defeat immediately gave rise to Warawa’s motion against gender selection abortion.

Woodworth’s motion also won the support of cabinet ministers, Diane Ablonczy, Peter Van Loan, Ed Fast, Penashue, Gerry Ritz, Gail Shea, Rona Ambrose and Jason Kenney, with Ambrose and Kenney being the two key names and two reasons this is likely not going to go away.

Even though the Woodworth motion lost, there was enough Conservative support to embarrass Harper.

This is not to suggest Kenney or Ambrose have any role in this incipient revolt, but Kenney is arguably the most powerful minister in the cabinet and Ambrose cited her opposition to gender selection abortions as her reason to voting for the Woodworth motion.

So this is more of a problem with party policy than freedom of speech.

The prime minister has repeatedly made clear that he was not going to reopen the abortion debate. He is too politically shrewd to allow it.

If anyone wants to see what happens when the question of women’s reproductive rights become an issue among (mostly) middle-aged males, they need only look at the Republican party south of the border.

If they want an example closer to home, they should remember what happened to the Reform Party under Preston Manning, when his merry band of populists was free to pronounce on any issue, from gay rights to public caning.

Harper is trying to protect the brand, but he’s also trying to hold off a movement within his own caucus that would have the parliament almost continuously debating a subject he has declared off the table.

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It may yet become a true battle for freedom of speech. But first the subject has to be broadened beyond the settled abortion question in this country.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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