Liberal Leadership Liveblog: Carney Coronation?

Thoughts On Tonight’s Announcement

I just finished pre-writing the column for later tonight so it’s time to start the Liberal Leadership liveblog! I’ll be here through 6 speeches, allegedly, getting increasingly drunk as I do. I’m also watching the Brier semi-final right now so expect random thoughts on that. (Gushue the man that you are for that final shot in 8.)

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7:05 PM - Carney’s doing fine. There’s nothing particularly new in this speech. It’s hitting the right notes, not screwing up. He’s never going to be the most exciting speaker, and that’s fine. We’re not trying to elect razzle dazzle, we’re trying to elect competence. If the worst thing you can say about him is he’s a bit boring, that fits with the message we’re trying to sell.

This’ll be the end of the liveblog, I’ll have a column in 15 minutes.

6:50 PM - While Carney’s speaking, let me take a moment to appreciate one of the greatest things about this result - the complete and utter destruction of Tom Allison. Freeland could not break 10% of the vote in a leadership race where she was until December the heir apparent, and where Allison was a big name get for her. I was correct that more than Carney v Freeland, Carney’s team versus Tom Allison wasn’t even a contest.

The campaign run by Braeden Caley was a strategic masterclass, a triumph of epic proportions, and a very clear signal for the capacity of Carney’s crew to run a good general election campaign. Tom Allison, on the other hand, should hang up his skates, after another disastrous outing. I tweeted in January that if I had to bet on the campaign Gerry Butts was on or the campaign Tom Allison was on, the choice was clear. Carney’s people, not just Gerry but all of them, met the moment. Allison made an ass out of himself. Good fucking riddance.

6:38 PM - I’m going to liveblog Carney’s speech but this is one of the funniest possible outcomes. Gould ran such a fan-fucking-tastic campaign and didn’t even break 5% of the vote. Everybody who claimed she ran some inarguably great campaign needs to re-evaluate their priors.

Also, how are the two best speeches so far coming from the daughters? This (and Ella-Grace’s) has been phenomenal.

6:33 PM - Mark Carney has won the leadership of the Liberal Party. Baylis got 3%, Karina Gould 3.2%, Chrystia Freeland 8% of the vote, and Carney got 85%. A significantly bigger win than expected.

My main takeaway is to laugh at the Gould boosters - her campaign was never as good as people claimed, and I feel vindicated.

6:24 PM - Thank fucking God, our long national nightmare is over. That was excruciating.

6:23 PM - Shut. Up.

6:19 PM - I admit I’m getting pretty fucking drunk, but what the fuck is the point of telling his greatest hits of stories with Bill Clinton? Is there a point to this? Or is this just a last speech before he croaks?

6:12 PM - I cannot communicate how little of a fuck I give about what happened in 1776 or 1812. Play him off.

6:07 PM - Someone find the Oscars music and play him off already.

6:00 PM - Chretien is up, and this speech is terrible so I might as well tell the story of the one time I saw Chretien in person. The night of the Bautista bat flip he did a speech at the campaign office in Ottawa West Nepean. He was good that night, but I mostly remember it because I heard the Jays won on a home run while at the campaign office, and then spent the next 24 hours piecing together what the fuck happened in that inning.

Also Crown is very good.

5:54 PM - Even for a political party that had an arrogance problem, this is especially full of themselves. Pierre Poilievre winning would be a very bad thing for a lot of people, but hearing the guy who risked a Poilievre government by staying on for so long imply and suggest that a Poilievre government is existential is just so fucking grating.

5:52 PM - Telford getting a shout out and not Butts feels like a mistake given that Butts’ departure was basically the moment the government went off the rails. (I have a 5000+ word column on that topic in my brain I just need to write, but I’m right.)

For a speech that was supposed to be about the future it’s a whole lot of looking backwards.

5:45 PM - Trudeau claiming to eschew the traditional departing speech full of platitudes and bromides about how great he is and then giving a speech full of bromides and platitudes, just this time about what country we are, is frustratingly on brand.

Big applause line for being a country that will always defend a woman's right to choose. Also, what the fuck is this “Elbow’s Up” chant, do we not remember Elvowgate?

5:41 PM - There’s a great irony in Trudeau starting this speech with “how’s the Liberal Party doing tonight?” when you were the impediment to the Liberal Party’s revival for about a year, but go off.

5:40 PM - Trudeau is about to speak, his daughter is introducing him right now. It’s a good speech, and doing this as a 16 year old is impressive. It’s the right note for this, and I’m glad there is someone here to say nice things about Trudeau.

I’ll admit, I tried to take a more positive pass at Trudeau’s legacy last night, but I couldn’t make it work. I’m still incredibly pissed at Trudeau, even if he’s done very well this week, and so I’m glad he gets the right send off.

5:35 PM - I am choosing to not opine on the land acknowledgment for what should be obvious, but let’s get a take off - the anthem change is really dumb and we should undo it. Doing it because some guy was dying is a horrible way of changing the anthem.

Also, I just got two straight ads for Nate Erskine-Smith’s podcast on Spotify, which is interesting on some level mostly because he hasn’t released an episode since he became a Cabinet Minister. Is it coming back?

5:25 PM - Carney pitching himself as a team player in preparation for the win is a good choice. Otherwise the speech was meh.

5:21 PM - I am not the target audience for Gould right now (I’m too pissy about the rest of this race) but by any objective measure this is the best speech of the 3 so far.

5:15 PM - Rosie Barton has said that there is at least a nominal 90 second clock on these speeches, which is fantastic. David Cochrane is (very politely) beating Freeland’s campaign over its head, pointing out correctly that she’s running a different campaign than she was Finance Minister.

Ooh, now it’s “Maple Syrup MAGA” from Chrystia on Poilievre. It’s almost as if the focus on dumb slogans and a Maneater walk up song and not, you know, intellectual honesty is why she’s losing.

5:08 PM - Frank Baylis is speaking now - it seems like the four candidates will walk in and give a speech in some order, before Chretien and Trudeau in some order speak? If that’s wrong, I’ll correct but that’s my understanding it seems. The speech he’s giving so far is fine, heavy on our history. Please God make these speeches short.

5:02 PM - Paul Martin getting completely exiled from Liberal events now while Jean Chretien still gets to show up is the ultimate vindication for those of us who are Martin haters. (In fairness I am solely a Martin hater because of my longstanding contempt for that podcast and the hosts.)

The CBC panel is talking about Trudeau’s legacy as I turn it on, which is the sign I need to start drinking. Cochrane is correctly making the point that Trudeau’s legacy as a political leader is more secure than his policy legacy. And Fred DeLorey can fuck off for quoting the debt stat when it’s completely bullshit if you quote inflation adjusted dollars.

(I am drinking Crown tonight for those curious.)

Intro - My main prediction for tonight is that people are overrating Karina Gould. She very well could come in second, but basically everyone’s “smart” prediction is she will do so. I think on some level it’s a farce, just because the kind of people who think Karina is running a good campaign are all denizens of Twitter and the groupthink is real.

Carney should win this on the first ballot, and I don’t think it’ll be particularly close. That said, I think Gould’s team has probably fucked up their expectations management. Given how many people are now expecting Gould to come second, if she comes third it’s a failure. I’d have done stronger pushback on the chorus of “she’s coming in second” takes.

Freeland’s run a horrible campaign and will get a horrible share of the vote. That said, I’ll be doing a toast to Chrystia tonight for ending Trudeau’s leadership and saving the Liberal Party. If she’d accept it I’d have Carney appoint her to International Trade and have her go make deals with the world leaders she built rapports with while she was at Foreign Affairs. She knows the landscape well, and I think she has another shift to play for Canada. Just not as PM.

FINAL GUESS: Carney 65%, Freeland 16%, Gould 15%, Baylis 4%