Jagmeet, Poilievre, And Divergent Paths

On A Year Since The Convoy

Has anything fundamentally changed?

It’s been a year now since the Convoy came to an end, a year in which a lot of sound and fury has come and gone, but it’s worth asking if anything has actually changed. We’re a year older, but has anything fucking changed politically?

If an election were held today, the Liberals would have 152 seats and be able to (barely) government with the support of the NDP, per my projections (pre-Abacus, but the average I used includes the last Abacus, so it’s not gonna wildly change). If you trust PJ Fournier’s math, the Liberals and NDP would be four seats short of a majority. There’s gonna be a redistribution before the next election anyways, so none of this actually matters, but what is interesting is the complete gulf between the tone about this country and this government and the actual data.

The fundamental truth about this government is that it’s about as popular as it ever is – it has a third of this country, give or take, on its side, with another ~20% voting for non-Liberal left wing parties. It is the biggest political party but not in a majority position in the Commons, and would be returned as such if an election were tomorrow. The road to a Liberal majority doesn’t run through English Canada but through Quebec, and specifically the band from the Eastern Townships to the South Shore of places economically reliant on Montreal that would be offended if you called them Montreal.

None of this is fundamentally different than it was last year, and while the specific asks may be different now – in 2022 it was COVID restrictions, now it’s a general complaint that the Liberals are divisive – fundamentally little has changed since last year or the last election.

So what, if anything, has changed? Two things, fundamentally – and they’re both worth taking the measure of.

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The first thing that’s changed is the Conservative Party has decided to give full throated Conservativism a try at the ballot box, which is what the party needed. Whether you agree with my prediction about Poilievre’s chances or not, I think everyone can agree that the Conservative bullshit of 2019 and 2021 of half baked pseudo-moderation without actually being moderate wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work, for a simple reason – it hasn’t. There’s a definition of insanity thing worth invoking here.

The next Conservative government will either be led by Pierre Poilievre on stridently right wing views, or it’ll be led by (someone like) James Moore on a message of explicit, inarguable, complete surrender on social issues. Either Poilievre wins this time around, or the Tory establishment gets off  their asses and runs a real moderate in the next leadership election on an explicit “you got your chance, you fucked up, we need to win” message.

The choice of Poilievre did more for movement conservatism than either O’Toole or Scheer did, because Poilievre is a choice which forces clarity at the end. The problem with both of those leaderships was it didn’t tell us anything about who could win government as a Conservative, because both old school PCs and ardent conservatives could create a path for themselves. Here, either Poilievre wins and that sort of Trumpian, Boris-ian, Scott Morrison-ian politics can win in Canada, or it can’t. The Tories will come out of the next election either in office or secure in how to win the next election, which is a notable difference than the ideological wasteland they were in with O’Toole.

The second fundamental change, however, is the death of a reputation. Jagmeet Singh has basically spent 2022 burning his goodwill, and now the impacts of that are showing itself. If you trust my projections, they’re down 4 seats from 2021, if you trust Fournier they’re down 6. The exact details aren’t really that important, but what is is the historical tendency for minor parties to underperform polls at midterm when the election comes.

More importantly, if Jagmeet’s strategy isn’t working now, when will it?

The NDP has made a strategic bet that there is an opening to the Liberals’ left on the idea that they are too corporatist and they’re too establishment. Putting aside whether that critique is true or not, they have gone all in on this strategy of attacking a government they’re propping up, for the goal of eating into the Liberal left. Spoiler: it’s not working.

The NDP are making no ground up in Ontario, where the vast majority of their offensive targets are, and they’re falling back in BC, which puts the majority of the NDP caucus at risk. (Fun fact: the NDP outside of BC has 12 seats, and the NDP’s BC branch is literally responsible for the majority of the caucus.) This is the same party that is choosing to attack noted non-Canadian company Shell for their profits as proof of the need for a windfall tax on excess profits. Given Shell is domiciled for tax reasons in the UK, those profits have already been taxed – including with an excess profits tax! – by Rishi Sunak.

The Shell thing is an example not of Jagmeet and the NDP being malicious, but just being unserious. You couldn’t find a Canadian company to make the point? Jagmeet got caught wearing a Rolex in some of his videos about how the working class were getting squeezed by rising inflation. You know who isn’t an everyman? A career politician who wears a fucking Rolex.

My main fucking takeaway in the year since the Convoy is the NDP is fucked beyond repair – Jagmeet’s current message isn’t working, and their bench is depleted. The fact that the last leadership election was his to win so easily is an indictment of the state of the party in a post-Jack, post-Mulcair world. The fact that a Parliamentary Party of 43 alternatives to Mulcair couldn’t come up with a better choice than Singh is pathetic. The fact that there’s been nobody waiting in the wings has contributed to his continued presence in the leadership, but that begets a gradual circle of decline.

The last 12 months have taught us two very clear things – that the Conservatives have gotten out of neutral, and that the NDP are stuck in it. I doubt very much that Poilievre’s brand of Conservatism can win in Canada, but I know, beyond a shadow of a fucking doubt that status quo Scheer/O’Toole-ism can’t. The Tories took a risk, and now they will know if it can work, or if they need a true rebrand. The NDP, on the other hand, have decided that going nowhere is perfectly fine. They just better not be shocked when the time comes and they’re lucky to scrape a baker’s dozen worth of seats.