Jenni Byrne And Winning In Spite Of Yourself

On Byrne’s O’Toole Idiocy

In June 2023, the night of the Oxford, Portage, Winnipeg, and NDG byelections I wrote a column saying that Pierre Poilievre, if he were smart, would fire Jenni Byrne for being actively bad at the job. Obviously that column looks absurd in the light of the July polling collapse and everything that has happened since, but I just reread that column and am pretty sure everything I wrote is correct. Pierre Poilievre’s operation has not been particularly effective, and they are mostly rising on the failures of the government. And that’s fine - they’re gonna win a massive majority. But it doesn’t mean your shit doesn’t stink.

Keir Starmer has a majority of 200 in the UK, and yet nobody would describe his pre-election work, his campaign, or his governance as exemplary, on either policy or political grounds. He won that massive majority despite a vote share in the mid 30s, and he is currently overseeing a far right surge England thought it vanquished. The idea of Poilievre as a Starmerite figure is compelling, even if comparing the two of them would make both men wince. But the reason I haven’t bothered litigating this opinion in a while is because it’s pointless, and highly likely to be misinterpreted and misunderstood by those acting in the worst of faith. Plainly, I do not think the Tories are running a good operation and the fact they’re winning doesn’t change that assessment.

What Doug Ford and his people are doing is far more impressive, because they are pushing the boulder up the hill of incumbency as opposed to getting the slide ramp of opposition that Poilievre benefits from. It’s probably worth pointing out that Ford listens to the ex-Harper staffer who actually has a functioning brain (Kory Teneycke) as opposed to Byrne, who has somehow managed to intercede on what should be weeks of Liberals shitting on themselves with one of the least needed interventions in modern politics.

I'm not going to lie and pretend I’m any big fan of Erin O’Toole’s, but O’Toole tweeted an entirely anodyne and unremarkable statement about Anita Anand’s retirement, thanking her for her work as Defence Minister and saying he knows she loves the Armed Forces. I don’t say this to be unkind or belittling to O’Toole - it’s a good thing he said it, I’m glad he did, but let’s not lower the bar to hell here. And then all hell broke loose.

Byrne decided to spend her Sunday fighting with O’Toole (and Mark Marissen, because sure, he’s the one to fight back with, okay), claiming that his tweet is why he’s no longer leader of the CPC and condemning Anand for supporting “DEI policies” including tampons in men’s bathrooms and something about pronouns I refuse to actually investigate or understand. Whether spontaneous or coordinated, multiple Conservative MPs presumably sucking up to the future Chief of Staff to the PM have echoed attacks on O’Toole, once again for the alleged crime of wishing Anita Anand well in retirement. What is wrong with you people.

The thing is - I have to reiterate this or the dumbasses who only read every fourth word will skip this point - you are going to win the next election in a landslide. It is guaranteed. The best chance a new Liberal leader has is stemming the bleeding, not stopping it. This is not an electoral problem. But it is a big governing one, and if you want to use your massive lead to start focusing on the act of governing this is a good place to start.

The real problem isn’t winning the next election - a Conservative Party led by Preston Manning or the reanimated corpse of Diefenbaker or even fucking RB Bennett would be able to win against this crap fest of a Liberal Party - but in being able to hold the gains. A Conservative Party that is this unable to stop itself from swinging at every pitch, every slight real or imagined, and every person who has ever said anything even vaguely critical of them or of Poilievre will come back to bite them. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. The only question is whether it’s before the massive victory or if it dampens the majority a bit.

The thing that every good government understands in time is that you need multiple pitches, you need different modes, you need to be creative and inventive and nimble in the pursuit of your goals. It’s golf around Augusta, with the uneven lies and need for weird, chaotic magic, as opposed to the straight lines and almost scientific nature of a US Open. It’s an art. Some people thrive in the chaos of constant reassessment, and some bulldoze their way through it. You don’t get points for knowing whether Byrne is the former or the latter.

The problem for the Conservatives, hilariously, is the lack of electoral consequence. If they were polling at 35% and not 45%, there would be internal accountability for this. Right now there isn’t, because the Conservatives can look at the polls and the byelections and say that they’re winning “because of” this relentless attacking strategy. They’re not, but they can say it, and because they’re at 45% it’s not really in anybody’s particular interest in actually debunking it internally. But the consequences of a group of people too isolated from reality and unable to conceive of the idea they need to do their jobs differently comes for everybody.

But most of all what this laughable episode is is more proof, not that we needed it, that the Conservatives are where they are now not because they have earned it with great ideas, and not because they have shown themselves to be statesmen worthy of the office, they’re here because of our failures. The Liberal Party has failed, and the consequence is we are about to elect a deeply unserious leader led by a deeply unserious person who thinks punching down on a party grandee is a smart thing to do.

The fault for that is a lot of people’s, sure. It’s the fault of the moderates in the party that the best they could offer in 2022 was Jean Charest and Patrick Brown, it’s the fault of O’Toole for not sitting Poilievre’s ass on the backbenches instead of letting him back into national prominence after a bit of a reduced exposure under Andrew Scheer, and yes it’s probably Postmedia’s fault too. But the landslide he’s about to win? That is the fault of every Liberal who tolerated the intolerable and defended the indefensible. So next time someone says we need to get serious to save the Liberal Party and the country from the consequences of unchecked Tory control, maybe remember that Jenni Byrne is about to run this country with complete impunity, and it’s your fucking fault.