History suggests that Prime Minister Stephen Harper should take the first open caucus rebellion of his seven-year tenure seriously.

A restless caucus does not always breed a leadership challenge but it is a rare leadership challenge that is not preceded by backbench flare-ups.

Such episodes routinely feature MPs who toil in relative obscurity, with little prospect of advancement but in politics hope springs eternal. It does not necessarily follow that their actions are completely divorced from the thought that they could do better under a different leader.

The MP who is the public face of this week’s challenge to Conservative party discipline is a fourth-term member of the government’s social conservative wing.

Mark Warawa, MP from Langley, B.C., is the author of the latest of a string of Conservative motions on the matter of abortion. None has passed to date. This one asks the House to condemn sex-selective abortions.

Last week, that resolution was deemed to be non-votable by a parliamentary sub-committee. Then this week Warawa, who planned to raise the demise of his motion in the House, was struck off the list of Conservative MPs who were slated to deliver statements in the lead-up to question period

On Tuesday, Warawa appealed to the Speaker to lift the gag imposed upon him by his party’s parliamentary officers. Other Conservatives MPs expressed sympathy for his plight.

It would be tempting to ascribe the incident to the usual anti-abortion suspects within the government and to dismiss it as the latest in a series of collisions between them and the prime minister.

But Harper’s latest efforts to shut down the abortion debate have caused the discussion to expand unto the larger field of parliamentary democracy.

Some Conservative MPs are apparently getting tired of barking only at the command of their master’s minions.

The issue is a sensitive one for the government. It has earned a well-deserved reputation for taking no prisoners in the House of Commons.

Warawa’s challenge also comes right on the heels of a just-as-rare breach in cabinet solidarity.

Last week, small business minister Maxime Bernier broke ranks with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty over the appropriateness of leaning on the banks to keep mortgage rates up.

Bernier has always been a bit of a maverick but he is popular among the party’s libertarian wing and has a larger following than any Quebec minister.

The social conservative MPs who went to the barricades for the right to speak their minds this week have an even more influential soulmate in the senior ranks of the cabinet.

Last fall, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney voted against the prime minister on a motion calling for a parliamentary examination of fetal rights.

Kenney is widely considered as a potential candidate to succeed Harper. In addition to his social conservative credentials, he has built a formidable network in the country’s ethnic communities.

That network makes him a key architect of Harper’s 2011 majority victory and an invaluable asset in the next one, especially if Trudeaumania should break out in the diverse suburban communities that will largely determine the outcome of the 2015 election.

Over the past year he has succeeded in blowing his own media horn to a degree that his cabinet colleagues can only envy.

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That is not to say that Kenney is conspiring to undermine Harper’s authority. The flag of the religious right can be a stifling one for a politician with national aspirations. He is too smart to wrap himself tightly in it.

But the first consequences of episodes such as this week’s challenge is to seed suspicion within the caucus and the cabinet. After seven years, it would not take all that much to trigger a chain reaction that would have every ambitious member in the government thinking about his or her place in a post-Harper future and manoeuvring accordingly.

On that score, the toothpaste may already be out of the tube.

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