Crombie's Milton Meltdown

On Ontario Byelections

What’s the excuse?

When Bonnie Crombie ran for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party she consistently said that she was in it to win it. She deliberately, repeated said that winning in 2026 was not just doable but that she’d do it. At a time when the party faces such a deficit, it was always a bit of a farce. But her pitch was simple. “I look forward to bringing the #OLP to victory, not in 2030 — but in 2026!” And now she just underperformed Steven Del Duca in Milton. 

This result is a disaster for the Liberals, a repudiation of Crombie and a huge warning sign for the party. After a leadership election in which Crombie and her supporters claimed that she was the right choice because she could beat Doug Ford, at her first test she’s gone backwards. But hey, at least the Liberals didn’t choose the principled candidate - after all, he might have lost Milton.

At the end of the day, this is the risk of basing a political party’s future on a cult of personality of a leader without any actual evidence that they can win. This is the problem with picking a leader like Crombie, whose whole case for electability turned out to be a House of Cards. Because when it all comes tumbling down, what’s left to fight for?

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Two things can be true simultaneously: Bonnie Crombie has been a better leader of the Ontario Liberal Party than I thought she would, and the implicit bargain she offered members has failed. She was forgiven for her utter lack of any actual progressive accomplishment as Mayor because she could win. We were told that because she can win, we needed to swallow our concerns about her support for John Tory, issues with how much Kathleen Wynne spent on health care and child care, and the fact that she explicitly said she wanted to govern from right of centre. The deal was we swallow this shit to win. If that’s your pitch, you have to fucking win.

Why has Crombie and co. allowed the PCs a free run at her on TV night after night during the NHL and NBA playoffs? If Crombie raised so much fucking money in December, why aren’t they spending any of it? Why did Crombie spend so much time in Milton while letting her party get destroyed on the airwaves? If the party has enough money to pay Bonnie a cool $185k/year in salary, why the fuck didn’t they spend some money to get another MPP?

There will be a lot of takes about what this byelection says about zoning reform or campus protests or whatever other issue, but we have no way of knowing what issue mix is responsible. What we do know is that this is not particularly off what you’d expect from David Coletto’s Abacus poll recently, which had essentially no change from 2022. This is not a stunning result, in a sense, which makes it even worse. 

The Crombie Liberals had a plan for the first quarter of 2024, and executed it. And now they’ve lost Milton. They drew a clear line in the sand on a Carbon Tax, they announced their big Housing policy, and even sprinkled in a suburban-friendly tax credit on children’s activities. This was the plan, and they seemed happy with the results of it. At least in my circle of connections and what I’ve heard, there was genuine happiness at how the plan was rolled out. And it’s flopped.

What’s interesting is that the reason for this failure isn’t even bleeding to the left parties. There’s no evidence that the NDP are gaining traction and if anything their slow descent into irrelevance is continuing. There should be a wide open lane for Crombie and she cannot even get a win in one of the PC’s most marginal suburban seats. If it weren’t for the fact that I know she’d never do it I’d say she should resign, because that’s how big of a disaster this is for her.

Where to go next is also a difficult question, if only because there’s no silver bullet. A pivot rightwards on carbon pricing hasn’t stopped the bleeding to Ford. The other left parties didn’t have a good night, so it’s not like we can just say that this is the product of disaffected progressives splitting the vote. There’s little reason anyone should be eager to throw her a lifeline. As much as the party could use Nate Erskine-Smith leaning in, it’s incumbent on Crombie and co. to make that approach and outline a real, substantive role for him to take in the leadup to the election.

But all of that is secondary to the main lesson of tonight, which is that claims of electability do not actually guarantee electability. The original case for Crombie’s leadership has been smashed to smithereens, and now she has to come up with a new case for the party’s existence. Because if she sustains more failures like Milton, there might not be a party left to save by July 2026.