Lessons From Error: Poilievre Can Win

What I Got Wrong And Why

The season of useless scandals is here, with a cabinet minister buying a lobster roll in PEI causing serious people to somehow lose all sense. Given I am advocating for others to hold themselves to some sense of standards, it’s probably not the worst time to hold myself accountable for one of the worst takes I’ve ever written, that Pierre Poilievre can’t win the next election.

This is not a declaration he will win the next election, but the basic premise of a lot of my 2022 coverage wasn’t just that the Liberals would win again, but that their victory was an inevitability. Whatever you think of the likelihood of the next election result, the Tory chance isn’t zero, and it’s obviously substantially above zero.

It’s also not certain, but that’s a separate and distinct point – before I pivot to “tales of Liberal demise are overstated”, I have to own the fact that I never thought we’d get here, and if I’m going to have any credibility I have to walk through why I was very, very wrong to say that Skippy couldn’t win, which he clearly can. And whether or not any Conservatives currently gleefully enjoying the demise of their most hated leader want to hear it, they’re making a version of the same mistake I made.

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This column isn’t going to be much about where we are now – we’re here now for a variety of reasons from housing failures to comms disasters to the fact that the China stuff knocked the government off message for the entire winter and spring. We’re also here because the government is aloof and out of touch, and even if Abacus and Mainstreet are excessive in the damage assessment, the Liberals are still in trouble. And people pretending they’re not or quibbling about the exact size of the disaster are deck chair shufflers on the Titanic.

The basic truth is that there’s no way I would have been stupid enough to write that Poilievre had no chance of winning in June 2022, because getting Ontario wrong was enough to move me off no chance, even though Poilievre was then (and I still kind of maintain is now) making stupid decisions. He is unfocused, he is unable to get through a press availability without picking a fight, he can be awkward, and his message jumps from his right flank to the centre constantly.

I thought that his support of the Convoy and the things that he’d inevitably say to win the CPC leadership would sink him, and hilariously, he kept saying dumb shit. Bitcoin as a way to opt out of inflation and proposing to ban all vaccine mandates (not just COVID) were the kind of batshit comments that were self induced errors. He didn’t have to move to those stances, but he did, and I thought it would hurt. It hasn’t, so far.

What I also underestimated is just how bad this government would do. I’ve never been the biggest fan of the government, but they’ve rarely lacked the ability to do big things. Whether those things have been good or not is for debate, but this is the government that stood up an entirely new national benefit in about 10 days. It’s not a government that lacks the intellectual heft to get things done, but the depth of their housing incompetence has been staggering to see.

But mostly what I got wrong was thinking that should and will are the same thing. Whether I thought it then or not consciously, I dismissed Poilievre as a candidate who could win in the suburbs because I thought that his nonsense would be seen to be disqualifying. Whether I knew it then or not, part of the reason I believed that is because I wanted to believe it, after the suburbs saw through O’Toole in 2021.

If your defence of me starts with “you couldn’t have known”, that’s a defence for not making bold and outlandish claims about events in the future. I was an idiot for making an otherwise solid case about what I thought about Poilievre a referendum on a single claim, which has now blown up in my face. And yes, it has, even if Trudeau wins the next election. Whether the argument I made was reasonable at the time is entirely irrelevant to whether or not I should have been a fucking asshole in how I wrote it. Anyone who wants to make fun of me for it or not read me in future or whatever is not just welcome to ignore me accordingly but to take your shots. I was an idiot. I was wrong.

But I’d give a warning as someone who let my view of a politician get in the way – Trudeau and the Liberals aren’t dead, by no means. Premiers (or not-Premiers, as it should be) Dix, Hudak, and (in 2012) Smith prove that things aren’t set in stone, as are the failures of Notley in May and the imminent failure of the Manitoba NDP this fall. They’ll also remember when the 2015 Alberta election was supposed to be a PCAA-Wildrose battle, before Rachel Notley became Premier.

International nerds will remember Prime Minister Corbyn was an inevitability for 18 months until he got smashed, they’ll remember when Mark Latham and Kim Beazley (arguably twice!) were supposed to beat John Howard, how Paul Keating was supposed to be a never-winner going into ’93, and how Bill Shorten was oh so certain of being resident of the Lodge.

It is odd that people seeing a sharp and sudden decline in the Liberal position in the polls are suddenly of the view that the polls are now a lock to see this government out, and a lot of those making that argument are people who think this government deserves to fall. I’m not here to argue this government’s been great, they haven’t been. But this isn’t death.

The Liberals might lose. Nobody who has their head screwed on properly would really pretend that a Poilievre Government is not a very plausible risk (or opportunity, depending on your politics). But if you were with me that the UCP being fucked in the late days of Jason Kenney or the early days of Danielle Smith was irrelevant to how things would go when the campaign started (and were right!), and are now declaring the end of Trudeau, come the fuck on.

The answer, which early 2022 Scrimshaw would not have wanted because it’s a bad answer in a column, is that the conditions for Liberal recovery are abundantly available to them, but the conditions being there and the Liberals managing to do it are not the same thing. If you want to argue this government will not do with their advantages what they can, go right ahead. I don’t have much of a counter right now. But to deny that they can is the same idiocy I fell victim to.

I don’t think there’s any way of knowing, really, whether this is Blair 2005 or Brown 2010 – a government wounded at midterm that, in getting to run against a law and order opposition with a leader prone to putting his foot in it, recovers, or a dying government with a bad economy losing decisively, but less decisively than they could have because of their union’s distinct society (Quebec and Scotland). If you’re inclined to my politics the Blair comp, or Dalton 2011 or any of the others – make you feel good about the chances of a rally. If you’re the more conservative half of my mentions, this is Brown or Gillard (and then Rudd) 2013, governments playing out the string. But the problem is, Scott Morrison’s polls 6 months out weren’t much better than Gillard’s, and her successor handed the Opposition the last properly big majority Australia’s seen whereas he won.

I was wrong to say Poilievre can’t win. It was idiocy on stilts, and I was wrong then. It never should have been written, because even if I thought then he wouldn’t win the idea of being that confident about the future is absurd, a lesson you’d think I’d know better than most. But a whole lot of people are making the same fucking mistake I made in writing off a politician they don’t agree with, and the chances are much better than they think that they’ll be saying similar shit in time.