Carney Wins: What’s Next

How Carney Can Improve For The General Election

Mark Carney has, as expected, won the Liberal leadership today resounding. The scale of his victory was bigger than expected, wildly impressive, and he will be sworn in as PM this week in all likelihood. His victory is a testament to the strength of his campaign and to the failures of his opponents, but I’m less interested in looking back than in looking forward.

We are possibly going to be in an election by next Sunday. It’s overwhelmingly likely we’re one within a fortnight. And Mark Carney, having won this campaign, deserves some benefit of the doubt that he can run a good campaign. But there is one thing that scares me looking forward - he didn’t show us much of who he is.

The short Liberal leadership race meant that he didn’t have time to introduce himself to the country much, mostly focusing on policy themes and less on personal stories, but he needs to let us in to his humanity. Carney won the Liberal leadership by appealing to people’s logic and reason - pointing out he was change at a time when that’s what the electorate wanted and highlighting his professional experience. It worked fine, in a party selectorate. To a wider audience he must go beyond that.

All the talk right now about how we are facing an existential crisis is correct. We are at a crossroads, and the Canada we choose to build from here is hugely important. This is a moment where national identity and national symbolism matters. It’s a fight for the soul of Canada, in many ways. And I’m fuzzy on what parts of that soul Carney connects to.

I’m not saying I doubt Carney loves his country - he clearly does. But he needs to show us his love of country and not just tell us. Voters are looking for authenticity more than ever before now, and Poilievre is seen as authentic, even though he’s a spineless sack of shit who changes with the wind. Carney is still mostly an unknown to Canadians as a person, and he’s going to be running a campaign that is likely to be about draping himself in the flag. It would be nice to get Carney to tell us why he views the country behind the flag as worth saving.

We need more than ever politicians to reveal themselves to us, because otherwise narratives will fill in the cracks. It’s a very low risk of doing things, because at the end of the day people just want to feel like they’re being led by a real person. They don’t have to like the cultural touchstones you like - one of the best moments in Scrimshaw Show history was David Coletto embracing his elder millennial status and calling National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation - a movie that I despise with the power of a thousand suns - his favourite Christmas movie. It’s a great moment because it humanized Coletto, and also me by virtue of my intensely negative visceral reaction.

If Canada is worth fighting for it has to be more than just a series of policy choices that make it so. It has to be something intrinsic in the nation itself that makes it worth fighting for, and if that’s true then we need to know what those are. Carney’s an Edmonton boy born in the 60s who came of age in the Oilers dynasty. He spent time at Harvard and Oxford in the 80s. He’s lived through some of the most interesting developments in history, and while he easily could have left Canada permanently he came back after school and came back after being at the Bank of England. Tell us why.

Tell us about the reaction to the Gretzky trade as a college student or tell us about the either terrible or amazing date that you think of every time you hear some random Neil Young song or whatever. Tell us about the seemingly random places dotted around this country that have special meaning to you because of family ties or just fond memories. His daughter, in her excellent introductory speech, mentioned her Dad used to burn CDs for his kids as gifts. Tell us what was on the CDs!

Pierre Poilievre will never be able to wrap himself in the flag fully because he has made Canada being broken such a core piece of the identity. It’s hard to then humanize yourself with nostalgia for the country if you’ve spent so much time pretending one government can (allegedly) break it entirely. But if Carney wants to embrace the mantle of Captain Canada he needs to be more than just a central banker with a plan, he needs to be more. He needs to be both the Prime Minister and the national Dad, in some ways. And being the national Dad means telling the story about how you called Heart of Gold “Pot of Gold” at bar trivia once or whatever. (This is a real Scrimshaw family story, to be clear.)

We’d love to live in a country where every voter takes a deliberate look at every policy platform and lines them up perfectly. We don’t. We need to sell not just a policy vision but a narrative of who Carney is. At a time when we are fighting for Canada, we need a leader who will show some of his soul. Otherwise, we might lose the battle for the nation’s soul.