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Rona Ambrose was the right person to lead the Conservative Party, at the right time.

The words are those of Larry Miller, the veteran Ontario MP known to his colleagues as The Keeper of the Flame, the straight-shooting voice of principle in caucus.

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But he says the feeling inside the party is unanimous. “There is zero dissent or negativity. We needed a makeover and she did it in spades. She brought a new face to our party,” said Miller.

Ambrose announced Tuesday she will leave politics this summer, having helped lift the Conservatives from their post-election defeat doldrums as interim leader.

When she was elected to the position ahead of a number of other candidates, she inherited a party that was down if not out. The caucus had been reduced to 99 MPs, turfed from the big cities and all of Atlantic Canada.

Ambrose’s ascent was not hailed in all quarters.

There were concerns she’d had a relatively undistinguished parliamentary career as a Harper government minister. In her first portfolio, Environment, where she was at the time the country’s youngest female cabinet minister, she was hampered by a government that had no intention of crimping economic performance to cut emissions.