What The Fuck Are The Conservatives Doing?

Why Carney’s Now Favoured

It is quite funny, but also quite true, that the thing that trips up oppositions is not when the government ignores them, but actually when they listen to them.

Oppositions have two basic opportunities when a government listens to them and adopts their policy - they can either criticize the government, or they can take a victory lap. The criticisms all fall under a general bucket of insincerity - they don’t actually believe in this, they’re just doing it to buy votes, they’re hypocrites given all the quotes about this they’ve said before, etc - while the victory lap is more confident, in some ways. “I’m happy to see that the government agrees with what we’ve been saying for two years, and we look forward to being able to implement our agenda without any delay as soon as there’s an election”, something like that. It’s certainly two different tones.

The Conservatives in Canada are certainly doing the first one, and it’s an illogical response. The Conservative won on the carbon tax. It’s gone, they won, and they’re acting like it’s not, which will only further cement the idea that they’re out to lunch. What Poilievre should be doing is claiming that Carney’s decision to scrap the carbon tax is evidence of his - Poilievre’s - foresight and intellect and take a curtain call. They should be presenting him as a forward thinker who won’t be dragged kicking and screaming to the policies that Canadians need. But they’re fucking this up.

And it leads me to an inescapable conclusion, one that I have been kicking and screaming against for two months now as the polls have gotten better and better for the Liberals. I think Mark Carney and the Liberals are narrow favourites to win the next election.

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There are a lot of reasons to think I’m wrong, and those answers are fairly robust. There is every chance this is a honeymoon-induced sugar high, a polling malaise for the Conservatives that will not last in a campaign proper. The historical comps in Canada have been litigated, including in these pages, enough times to make us all bored to death, but they’re facially not good. And Kamala Harris did lead in the US. But there’s also a lot of reasons to think this is different.

The comparison to Kamala is instinctive, both for what it shows and what it doesn’t. Both inherited a political position that was incredibly bad, both got a boost right out of the gates, and rode momentum and fundraising to a lead. The difference is Harris wasn’t able to effectively break with Biden at all - there was a book excerpt in The Hill this week about how Biden called Harris the morning of the debate to remind her not to break with him. Carney faces no such obligation, given that Justin Trudeau is now merely the Member for Papineau and is (much to his credit) keeping whatever issues he has with Carney unwinding one of his signature policy achievements to himself.

Carney was also not a member of the government before becoming PM, a fact that matters. The fact that the Conservatives have to search for some 2020 headline of some “advising” as the best they’ve got is a sign they’re scrambling. It’s also not even a guaranteed winning message, because Trudeau is not nearly as unpopular as he was when he resigned. We don’t have the data from this week’s poll, but in December Trudeau’s favourables were 19%, with a net of -45%. As of late February? 26% and a -30% net, both per Abacus. When Chrystia Freeland resigned, 11% believed the Liberals deserved to be re-elected and 56% thought both that it is time for change and that there is a good alternative. This week, those numbers were 21% and 48%.

The problem the Conservatives have to face is that they were never roaring in the polls because of their own brilliance, it was much more a function of anger towards the Liberals. Poilievre’s favourables were never something incredible - he peaked at a favourable of 42% and a +7% net, which is now 36% and -7% - and not the reason for his huge lead. It was always much more about the fact that the government wasn’t being listened to and that Justin Trudeau was deeply unpopular. The switch alone was a necessary but not sufficient characteristic, and worth a ton of the recovery.

Obviously Trump has been a boon to the cause of Liberalism in Canada, but in terms of trying to predict what will happen the fact that it’s unfair to the Cons that they got fucked with this 51st State crap is irrelevant. Donald Trump has ignited a Canadian patriotism that hasn’t been this fervent since the Unity Rally, a passion for country that is seismic. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle, and there’s also no denying that the Liberals have managed to wrap themselves so thoroughly around the flag that Canadians believe a Liberal government is synonymous with a patriotic one.

Carney’s invocations of our British, French, and Indigenous heritage is part of that. Carney, having not been forced to speak on every controversy of the past decade, will be able to speak about that past more passionately and authentically than Trudeau ever could have. Having never opined on the various controversies around renaming buildings or institutions or around statues, Carney will not be dogged by the idea he only loves his country’s past when it’s politically useful.

During the 2021 campaign, I wrote a piece about the IVR polling and whether the Conservatives could actually win that included a quote I’ve thought about a lot since. “If I am too cowardly to say in public what I say and believe in private, then nobody should give a damn what I have to say anyways.” I stand by that as an organizing principle. I am terrified that I’m believing in hype because I want to, not because it’s true. I am terrified. But I think Carney’s legit.

The Conservatives don’t have an answer to Carney that works. They’re bloviating about how Carney’s order to zero out the Carbon Tax isn’t actually a legal order on its own (though it is a necessary step in the process) because they don’t have an answer, even though all they’re doing is making every news site run an explainer entitled “How Is Mark Carney Able To Abolish The Carbon Tax?” that ends up being free media for us because all people will hear is some combo of the five words Mark Carney Abolish Carbon Tax. It’s a textbook Streisand Effect.

Does this matter? No, but it’s a signal that the Conservatives aren’t ready, they don’t know their message, and they don’t know how to attack Carney. Carney’s people deserve the benefit of the doubt that they can run a campaign well. Jenni Byrne’s last campaign was the infamous Cultural Barbaric Practices shitshow campaign of 2015, and the last two months inspire negative confidence, if that’s possible.

Carney and the Liberals are the narrow favourite to win the next election. This isn’t something that will be easy, and there’s a lot of uncertainty to come. But right now, for the first time, I actually believe Carney’s going to win. And the reason why is simple - I have no fucking idea what the Conservatives are doing.

And I suspect they don’t fucking know either.