Liberals: Brace for impact
If victory is improbable, plan for a better defeat
The good news for federal Liberals from Thursday’s Biden-Trump debate is that it provides a brief distraction from Liberals’ own woes. Justin Trudeau must be pleased by the cover. The prime minister’s schedule has called for pooled coverage all week: only a single reporter has been permitted into Trudeau’s few public events, with no mandate except to watch and take notes to send to other outlets. There has been no provision for questions. In 2012 Trudeau wanted Canada to become Asia’s designer and builder of livable cities. Now he hopes Canada will leave him alone until the weekend. The prime minister is said to be a science wonk. Perhaps there is a term in physics for a super-hot star that shrinks to a photo op.
The prime minister’s behaviour is a tell. We have seen it before. When he is saying nothing in public about a topic he should obviously address, it is usually because he has already made a decision, and his staff is preparing communications material for later announcements. This takes time. There’s nothing to be done about it. This government always did corner like a Volvo.
But one of the points I tried to make in my book about Trudeau is that not everything is about Trudeau. Should he quit? On balance I think he should stay because I think a Liberal victory in the next general election has become wildly improbable. There is no point in offering two sacrifices to the electorate’s wrath — Trudeau and whoever would replace him in time to lose the next election — when one will do. The Liberals are due for some applied fatalism. If Trudeau is willing to stick around and take the loss, they should let him.
But mostly I think the question is secondary. Liberals were in big trouble before Justin Trudeau came along: see the elections of 2006, 2008 and 2011, and in particular, the downward trajectory they traced. There is no reason to believe the party’s trouble would end with Trudeau’s departure.