Carney Won't Save Trudeau

On Today's Insufficient Announcement

“I follow to the edge of the Earth/And fall off”

It is, much to my chagrin, exceedingly clear that parts of the Liberal Party are prepared to follow Justin to the edge of the Earth. The response from many to my exasperation at the state of the party proves it as such - there are people who cannot believe that someone can be a Liberal and say the things that I’ve said about Trudeau in recent times. The fact that a Montreal area MP just put their name to the fact that Trudeau can’t win the next election should be a pretty big repudiation of the idea that somehow I’ve gone rogue for admitting the problem we face.

I’ve been angry for months now about the state of my party, but then Trudeau announced his big solution to the problem - naming Mark Carney to a Growth Task Force - and now I’m just sad. Because it is so pathetically insignificant, and it is a confirmation of what we know, but don’t want to admit. The PM, and those around him, are tragically, willfully out of touch and in denial about the state of the government they lead. They do not understand the reality. And it is now a moral imperative if we don’t want Pierre Poilievre to win so many seats that it takes three terms to defeat him that we get rid of the leader who thinks that is enough.

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Let’s dispense with why Carney’s doing this - I don’t really know for sure, but this reads like an attempt to be loyal to Trudeau in an effort to curry favour from those who will inevitably complain that Carney’s not really a Liberal in the next leadership race. It’s also a no-lose proposition for Carney - he either agrees to do some meaningful work for the 2025 budget, or the Liberals knife JT and he’s freed from his obligation while getting a free boost of publicity. From the Liberal side, announcing Carney this week is a transparent attempt to try and turn the page going into a week where a third of the caucus just bailed on attending the caucus retreat.

It’s clear that Trudeau thinks highly of Carney and Carney probably feels he has another shift to put in to public life. I get it. But to treat this appointment in a vacuum - both of the PM’s political problems, the persistent rumours that Carney was sounded out on being Finance Minister earlier this summer, and the fact that Carney is very obviously running a shadow leadership campaign - is to treat people like they’re idiots. This is an inherently political decision by the PM. But the thing is, I can’t figure out who he thinks this will mollify, which is the whole problem with the current leadership.

Who does Trudeau think isn’t voting for us now but will vote for us because of Mark Carney’s appointment? Or, let’s even be nicer, who does Trudeau think will vote for him after a 2025 budget that is de facto co-authored by Carney? What is the path forward from this move to an improvement in the polls? Is it that blue Liberals who are reluctantly Poilievre supporters will be drawn back? That some amorphous sense that Carney is a Serious Thinker will give the government credibility? Because that’s not really who abandoned the party.

Leger has the Liberals running 5% ahead of their national vote share amongst the 55+ age bracket and Abacus’ big sample data tweeted by David Coletto has the Liberals most popular amongst those 58+. The notion that the big Liberal losses are amongst people who give a shit who Mark Carney - who last served in public service in Canada in 2013 - is for the birds. It’s ludicrous. Carney is a nothing burger to the actual voters who elected Trudeau in 2021 and are electing Poilievre now. Carney was at the Bank Of England for most of the consequential times of this government, and nothing in his interventions so far suggests he understands what Canadians want or need. Platitudes about how progressives build things and far right populists destroy isn’t a plan for growth.

The Liberal Party is playing announcement whack a mole because it cannot tell itself the truth. No announcement, no decision, no move can fix the very basic fact that the country hates Justin Trudeau. They have announced about 15 policies before and at the Budget that polled well. I believed in April that the polls might get better with those announcements! And then they didn’t. The moment they didn’t - despite the big changes, including the signature one, polling well - was the moment Trudeau’s resignation became necessary. Their polls are if anything worse than they were in April. This is not about more announcements. This is about one announcement.

Alexandra Mendes, the Liberal MP who came out and said Trudeau can’t win, represents an off-island Montreal seat where she has gotten 50% or more of the vote in 2015, 2019, and 2021. This is close to as safe a seat that exists. And even her voters are done with the PM. We just lost Toronto-St. Paul’s. We’re about to lose Paul Martin’s old seat. 50-ish Liberal MPs didn’t even show up to the caucus retreat. 5 Ministerial Chiefs of Staff resigned this morning. 

Honestly, do you know how fucked this situation is? I have staffers reaching out to me because they’re excited somebody else can acknowledge the situation we’re in. Every time I talk to someone on the Hill the basic sense is that the government is doing the This Is Fine.fire meme. Whether this PM and this PMO wants to admit it or not, this Prime Ministership is dead.

There are no miracle comebacks left, no magic rabbit they can pull out of a hat, nothing. This either ends with the Liberals losing LaSalle, losing Halifax, losing Cloverdale, and then winning 45 seats and putting the Liberal Party back on the life support that Trudeau promised to save us from, or in his resignation. There is no good outcome for Justin Trudeau. He is too toxic, he has made too many bad decisions, and he is too insular to save the party.

I started this piece with Weird Fishes, because it is genuinely the state we are in. There is no way to save this party without Justin Trudeau stepping aside. If he truly wants to, he can lead us to the edge of the Earth, and we will fall off it. If he is so misguided, so arrogant, and so self-absorbed as to do this to his party, then yes, it’s possible we will fall off. But I refuse to accept that. It is not an absent of my Liberalism that makes me yearn for change but a surplus of it. I am so committed to the health of the Liberal Party and the liberal movement that it is my obligation to do everything I can to help this party avoid the utter calamity about to befall it. I respect Justin Trudeau, and I will be forever grateful for the things he has done that will make this country better. Giving Mark Carney a fake job will not save this country from 250 Conservative seats. A budget next year after nobody gave us any credit for the 2024 budget won’t save us. He has to go

For the love of God, Justin, go. Your country needs you to. Save the party, and help save the country the worst excesses of the right you claim to want to fight.