LeBlanc And The Old Guard's Last Stand

On The Globe's Story

It is certainly possible this is all a coincidence. It is possible that the two news stories of the week outside of the details of the budget itself – a former Liberal Finance Minister trashing the budget, and a leak in the Globe that Dom LeBlanc took a meeting with a former (read: Chretien-era) Cabinet Minister about leadership organizing – are unconnected. It’s entirely possible that Morneau is just trying to go to bat for his buddies on Bay Street, and that LeBlanc got blindsided by this leak. It could just be disconnected parts.

But man, look at this honestly and tell me you don’t think it’s weird that the right of the party are flexing their muscles this much in a week when the budget is generally thought to be good politics for the government (or, at least, nobody’s panning it as a disaster politically). This isn’t about parts of the party being upset that this budget went over like a bucket of warm piss, but seeming disappointment that it didn’t, because a catastrophic budget would have likely made the lives of the plotters easier.

Oh, and Tom Mulcair’s also thinking this government doesn’t go to an election with Trudeau as their leader, which is not in and of itself newsworthy (Mulcair’s as often wrong as he is breathing), but as a sign of the Laurentian Elite/inside the beltway (or I guess Queensway) consensus, is notable. But the Liberal right hasn’t produced a politician of any quality since LeBlanc, and the other actually good one was Scott Brison, who hardly counts as a product of the Liberal right in any meaningful form.

But at the end of the day, I think Trudeau is going to see out this election, which means debating whether the pressure campaign will work is a waste. But it does raise an interesting question – why has the right of the Liberal Party died on the vine so much that the best they can do is a former Minister meeting with LeBlanc?

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The rise of the left of the Liberal Party has been a subject of a bit of commentary before, but the real interesting story in Canadian politics is the completely hollowing out of the moderate centre. Outside of Michael Chong, who you can argue but did at least vote for gay marriage in 2006, the last two governments haven’t produced basically any good, lasting crop of moderates. Lisa Raitt and James Moore, the closest things to it under Harper, either left the Parliament or lost their seats. The Liberal class of 2015 wasn’t exactly moderate, either, and the departure of remnants of the Chretien-Martin cabinets throughout the government has generally seen the government bring in fresher, left wing blood.

The fact that Jean Charest was the moderate standard bearer in the last CPC leadership race is more evidence of the vacuum that exists, but it’s not just a Tory problem. The moderate right of the Liberal Party has no champion. Morneau is the closest it’s had, but even then he’s just very rich and therefore protecting his own interests. He wasn’t actually articulating a Chretien-era ideology, just fighting back against tax rises.

The problem for the party’s right flank is that they can dislike the leftward drift of the party all they want, but there’s no ambition or vision they’re articulating. Okay, great, the government’s too left-wing – name the program spending you’d cut and/or the taxes you’d cut to get closer to balance. If it’s so simple, someone inside the party apparatus should be able to, but there’s nothing.

The fact that key players on the party’s right are more interested in playing politics and showing their virility in the Globe instead of coming up with solutions to the housing crisis or climate or whatever else is a good summary of the problem. Where is the energy amongst the Bay Street class of the Party to find new recruits and get them into safe seats? Where’s the noise for a more centrist party? Mike Moffatt has revitalized the party’s interest in housing with some tweets and op-eds, a school food program is in the works because of the work of advocates. Don’t you think former Cabinet Ministers coming out and putting their names to a list of actual, actionable ideas would be good? Well, it’s a pipe dream, currently.

The thing about this government is that it’s remarkably left wing for a government that is led by someone whose Dad was PM, whose maternal grandfather was a Cabinet Minister under St. Laurent, and who comes from a family where hobnobbing with the rich and famous has been so commonplace his mother did the Harlem Shuffle with Mick Jagger. For all of the (legitimate) points about Justin being a nepo baby, he’s been remarkably willing to shun the politics you’d assume from his history.

He's never struck me as a particularly ideological PM, and his scandals prove it. SNC and WE were about Trudeau identifying problems and choosing the people he knows as the mechanisms to achieve his goals. They weren’t grand ideological problems – Trudeau doesn’t view outside capacity as a principle to be a good thing, he just wanted to outsource the pandemic student funding to WE to get an issue off his desk. He’s embraced both state intervention and market signals on climate change, he’s been attacked for being too cozy with authoritarians and for not prioritizing Canadian business enough in foreign policy. He isn’t an ideologue.

Whatever you think of the man’s tenure, he has made mistakes and succeeded not because of some deep-held ideological beliefs but in spite of their lacking. The room has been there for the right of the party to persuade Trudeau to a more market-oriented approach, to less fiscal stimulus, to a more measured approach. But they have utterly failed because they’re either too arrogant or too stupid to realize how to play politics in this age. The party has been there for the taking, but the moderate wing has failed to make a case for its own existence.

If those who think Trudeau has taken the party too far left want to salvage the party they need to not focus on leadership and more focus on ideas. The thing about the old guard of the Liberal Party is they are fucking terrible at picking new leaders. Bob Rae and Gerald Kennedy both thought Stephane Dion was the right choice to lead the party. Michael Ignatieff was recruited and fast tracked to the leadership. Hell, many Senior Liberals wanted Rae to renege on the promise not to run for the fulltime leader in 2012.

Is Dom LeBlanc on maneuvers? Probably. Will he, or any other candidate of the party’s right, be successful? No. And the reason’s simple – the LPC’s right haven’t had a new or good idea in 20 years. Until that changes, they can sit down and shut up.