From London to Paris via Washington, the electoral mood that threatens to coldly thank outgoing leaders is not enough to reassure Justin Trudeau. The ambient wind is for change, whatever the cost, whatever the ideology, its radicalism or the delinquency of the replacement option. The era is resolutely one of the clearing out of political regimes, against which the Canadian Prime Minister, whose own troops threaten to subscribe to it, has found nothing to offer.
The electoral struggles being waged these days in the United Kingdom, France and the United States all have their own domestic dynamics. Governments have disappointed expectations, accumulated scandals or political crises. But everywhere, these setbacks have the universality of having been greeted by popular intransigence that has fed an underlying and growing anger.
President Emmanuel Macron’s reckless gamble is about to fail in France, where the radical right-wing National Rally is preparing to win a legislative majority whose scope will be determined after the second round on Sunday, while south of the border, the uncertain intellectual acuity of President Joe Biden, if he hangs on as a presidential candidate, could well hand the keys to the White House back to his predecessor turned criminal, Donald Trump. Rishi Sunak’s British Conservative Party will likely suffer the inevitable setback of political change this Thursday, after 14 difficult years in power, replaced not by the far right for its part, but by the Labour Party.
Having been battered in the polls, disowned in the Toronto–St. Paul’s by-election and criticized (or worse) internally, Justin Trudeau is relying on the widespread anxiety that has brought the far right to power in European democracies to explain this persistent disaffection. It is true that 70% of Canadians now agree, according to the polling firm Ipsos, that “Canada is broken,” as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre keeps telling them ad nauseam without offering any concrete solutions. But Poilievre, while a populist, is not radical.
The fall of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, in power for almost nine years, also evokes the popular fatigue suffered by the British Conservatives, who will be succeeded by the left, according to electoral forecasts. And if Mr. Trudeau prefers to compare himself to Emmanuel Macron or Joe Biden, it is clear that the strategy of demonizing the right-wing option has failed.
This challenge of persuasion, which Mr. Trudeau has been failing for a year, has now been transferred to his own ranks. Calls for his departure as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada are rare and mostly anonymous. Only one MP (New Brunswicker Wayne Long, who will not seek re-election) and only one of his former ministers, Catherine McKenna (close to the aspiring candidate for his succession, Mark Carney) have spoken out publicly, as have two other former ministers in Jean Chrétien’s government.
Although limited, the grumbling is not at all unbearable for Justin Trudeau, who is now paying the price for his distant relationship with his caucus. Nine of its members are also calling for an emergency meeting of the Liberal team to dissect the stinging electoral defeat suffered ten days earlier. Here again, apart from the instigator of the letter, Albertan George Chahal, the eight co-signatories have refused to come out of the shadows, testifying to the timidity of the discontent. For now… Because this political nervousness has the unfortunate habit of getting worse. Especially when it is not appeased.
But not only did Justin Trudeau not commit to meeting with his entire caucus, he also failed to promise them the changes in direction they demanded, during his first meeting with the press since the Toronto thaw, in Montreal on Wednesday. “Continuing to deliver for Canadians,” as he insists on repeating, will not do anything.
The Liberal leader must burst the boil: leave his pride in the locker room, get into the boxing ring and take the blows from his MPs. Then adjust his aim. Transferring a few ministers or obscure political employees would not change much, in any case. It is the Liberal political offer — with its successive deficits, its administrative inertia and its bureaucratic heaviness — that voters, and some members of the caucus, are no longer convinced of.
The old adage is that it is not opposition parties that win elections, but governments that lose them. If he persists in satisfying his vanity, Justin Trudeau may well come to confirm this in turn. Unless his troops force him to cut his mandate short before then.