Canada's Winter Of Discontent

On Managed Decline

“The fundamental truth is that all Labour governments run out of money. The last Labour government gave us the winter of discontent, this Labour government has given us the decade of debt. The last Labour government left the dead unburied, this one leaves the debts unpaid. They sit there, running out of money, running out of moral authority, running out of time and you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another 14 months of this government of the Living Dead?”

In 2009, David Cameron gave the traditional Budget Reply, his argument against Gordon Brown, New Labour, and 12 years of a government running past its best before date. It was warranted – the UK’s deficit numbers were running up against 10.5% of GDP in 2009. In a similar way, the end of the previous Labour government – the inflation-plauged ‘70s government of Wilson and then Callaghan - presided over what could best be described as managed decline.

The reason I’m thinking about all of this is the notion of some form of Canadian brokenness, and the insistence in some quarters that things are not as bad as they seem. I get the reason they’re doing it, and they might not even be wrong (though, I certainly think that some of the arguments fall flat), but it’s pissing in the wind. And at this point I wonder whether there are others who actually want this government to be re-elected or not.

I actually think Gordon Brown provides a template for the Liberals, insofar as his government was getting fucked in the polls and they managed to recover enough to hold Cameron to a minority. But that Tory Party was trying to go from less than 200 seats to 326 seats, a much higher burden than what Poilievre has to do. (Also, Jagmeet is no Nick Clegg.) But the problem is that the Liberals are seemingly committed to acting at all times as if everything is fine when it is very clearly fucking not. If they’re going to claw back this ever expanding lead, they need to appreciate that we are in a crisis. But they can’t.

And at some point if this government isn’t going to get it then I don’t know what the point of any of this is.

…

“I only stick with you/Because there are no others”

The truth about Justin Trudeau’s last two wins is that they were not wins out of active love for him, but wins by default. Both Scheer and O’Toole were useless leaders, and Jagmeet has never shown himself to be anything more than a waste of progressive time, energy, and hope. That doesn’t make them any less real, but it does mean that his support was also going to be a bit more wafer thin than many – myself included for much of this Parliament – thought.

So, when the economy tipped over and the problems started to hit, it’s understandable why the party’s polling hit the shits. What is less explicable is why there’s nothing resembling an economic vision coming from this government. We had some leaks in the Fall that the 2024 Budget is going to be somewhat tight, but since then we’ve heard nothing about what this government wants to achieve. Is this government prepared to see us tip into recession if that forces rate cuts? I have no idea, do you?

This government is the infuriating friend who takes weeks to respond to simple questions, because when you actually get them it can be rather good. There are clearly smart people working in this government, as shown by Sean Fraser’s existence and the willingness of parts of the machine to try innovative ideas and work in interesting ways. Which is what makes the milquetoast failures so much worse.

The reason I can’t stop thinking about the Winter of Discontent and the end of New Labour is that they are fundamentally similar to what is plaguing the current Liberal malaise. So focused on fighting the immediate fire they completely abandoned all sense of what they were there to do. Callaghan was so focused on trying to bring down inflation that he abandoned much of the governmental apparatus to this focus, eventually losing control of the unions and of everything else around him. Gordon Brown’s free spending in the good times – remember, he boasted that the UK had “abolished boom and bust” – came at a cost in the bad, and trying to fix it led to many of the ills that ended up seeing Britain exit the EU in time.

The problem for me is not just that I want a left wing government, it’s that I’m not sure a left wing government will actually do what’s needed. I am a progressive and I am a fan of the Liberal agenda, but we also need an agenda built around growth and not merely accepting the managed decline. Resting on our laurels and accepting second best is a quick way to global irrelevance and eventual poverty. I don’t think Pierre Poilievre has the answers, but at some point it’s hard to argue that people taking a chance on him is worse than a status quo where plenty of people have been failed.

The truth, as I wrote last week, is that plenty of people have been losers from this government, including plenty of people who should be natural allies. There are people who are empathetic, kindhearted, open to voting for the left who feel like this government has failed them. If you don’t know anyone like this then congratulations on the bubble you’re in, because the cost of government intervention in large swathes of the economy is that those who don’t benefit from the intervention notice. And they don’t like being made to feel like second class citizens.

The problem with many on the left is that the discourse around privilege and dispossession has turned many who understand empathy into the exact kind of vindictive assholes that we stereotype the right for being. Plenty of people my readers know and respect are going to vote for Poilievre. That’s a fact. Plenty of people who believe in climate action and who care about minority rights and who believe in equality are going to vote for Poilievre because this government has lost its purpose.

This government does have time. It can turn the tides with effort, coherence, and an understanding of the position it finds itself in. But I have no fundamental idea whether this government gets it. Many of its supporters don’t seem to get that managed decline is not good enough. We are conditioned to believe we are a great country. It is time for our government to fucking act like it. If not, we may see a period as transformative, and as damaging to progressive ideals, as the last two Conservative governments have been across the pond.

Trudeau has won because there are no others. At this point, that’s not enough to sustain the Liberals. May they please fucking understand this before time runs out.