[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

Today comes to light the biggest mistake of the Trudeau government. Negotiating a new NAFTA with a Trump administration instead of doing the right thing & waiting it out.

Pretty sure Trudeau's biggest mistake was signing that deal with the Chinese for vaccine development and then scrambling last August to sign deals with other vaccine manufacturers which put us behind the priority list.

What's so wrong with new Nafta anyways?

[Malthus]

I think that is an accurate summary.

But I would add that by the time we get through COVID, the Cons are going to have a very hard time convincing anyone other than their base that small government is the best government.

Their strategy may be to simply rely on the fickleness of the public, who by that time will be very weary of Covid measures and resentful of the sacrifices necessary to undertake them.

You see this sort of thing historically - for example, the English voting out Churchill at the earliest opportunity following WW2: he may have personified defiance during the war, but once it was over, he was seen as yesterday's man - and not rewarded with electoral gratitude for helping to win the war, but resented for the continuing austerity necessitated by the cost of winning.

Problem for O'Toole is that this is a speculative far future reaction. His immediate issue is being tarred with the stain of Trumpism, and being effectively unable, until the emergency is over, to mount any credible assault on the government's performance, without sounding like a denier from the lunatic right. The immediate future looks dark for his party.

What is surprising is that it doesn't look any brighter for the NDP. If ever a situation called for more 'socialism', it is this one. Yet you don't hear much from them these days except the usual opposition stuff. Have the Libs successfully eaten their lunch?

[crazy canuck]

Singh is difficult to figure out.  He was a non entity before the election and then during the election he was very effective.  And now he has reverted to being a non entity.  No idea why that is.

What you have described has essentially happened in BC where the NDP have positioned themselves as the natural governing party and it is very difficult to see either a centrist or, especially, a right wing party having success unless the NDP really turn corrupt - which is also not likely in the near future.  They are a very well run gov't atm.

[Jacob]

You see this sort of thing historically - for example, the English voting out Churchill at the earliest opportunity following WW2: he may have personified defiance during the war, but once it was over, he was seen as yesterday's man - and not rewarded with electoral gratitude for helping to win the war, but resented for the continuing austerity necessitated by the cost of winning.

Alternately Churchill was a blowhard and a bit of a tiresome git, and he was only tolerated as a leader because they had a unity government anyhow and the British public didn't fancy switching leaders in the middle of the war. They hadn't been subjected to decades of hagiographies extolling Churchill's many virtues, so they may be less convinced of how instrumental he was.

Of course, the same effect could apply to Trudeau as well. Maybe Canadians are merely tolerating him because we don't want major changes during a crisis, but post crisis we'll have a different opinion. We'll see.

Problem for O'Toole is that this is a speculative far future reaction. His immediate issue is being tarred with the stain of Trumpism, and being effectively unable, until the emergency is over, to mount any credible assault on the government's performance, without sounding like a denier from the lunatic right. The immediate future looks dark for his party.

Yeah he doesn't have a lot of room to manoeuvre.

What is surprising is that it doesn't look any brighter for the NDP. If ever a situation called for more 'socialism', it is this one. Yet you don't hear much from them these days except the usual opposition stuff. Have the Libs successfully eaten their lunch?

Maybe they're trying to be responsible team players or something?

[Valmy]

Alternately Churchill was a blowhard and a bit of a tiresome git, and he was only tolerated as a leader because they had a unity government anyhow and the British public didn't fancy switching leaders in the middle of the war. They hadn't been subjected to decades of hagiographies extolling Churchill's many virtues, so they may be less convinced of how instrumental he was.

Source? Polling at the time had Churchill personally high but his conservative party was getting politically shredded by the Labour Party's political strategy.

Also the Conservatives, and its allies, had been in power for decades by this point with only a short Labour stint in the 1920s. People wanted a bright future and the Conservatives were the party of the past and the failures of the 1930s in particular.

So where is this evidence this was a personal rebuke of Churchill?

[Jacob]

Source? Polling at the time had Churchill personally high but his conservative party was getting politically shredded by the Labour Party's political strategy.

Also the Conservatives, and its allies, had been in power for decades by this point with only a short Labour stint in the 1920s. People wanted a bright future and the Conservatives were the party of the past and the failures of the 1930s in particular.

So where is this evidence this was a personal rebuke of Churchill?

No source, also not a "this is my position and I'll argue for it." It was mere idle speculation

[Valmy]

No source, also not a "this is my position and I'll argue for it." It was mere idle speculation

Gotcha.

Ironically I think Churchill's own propaganda helped unseat him. He kept assuring the UK that if they just kept sacrificing a little while longer great times were ahead, and the party actually proposing policies for that great time was the Labour Party not his. Whoops.

[Sheilbh]

Alternately Churchill was a blowhard and a bit of a tiresome git, and he was only tolerated as a leader because they had a unity government anyhow and the British public didn't fancy switching leaders in the middle of the war. They hadn't been subjected to decades of hagiographies extolling Churchill's many virtues, so they may be less convinced of how instrumental he was.

Of course, the same effect could apply to Trudeau as well. Maybe Canadians are merely tolerating him because we don't want major changes during a crisis, but post crisis we'll have a different opinion. We'll see.

Churchill was popular the Tories weren't. The entire country had basically been run as a planned economy as Labour promised during the war and that made sense to people. Labour ran as a "now win the peace" campaign and were trusted. Attlee had been Deputy Prime Minister, Herbert Morrison was Home Secretary, Ernest Bevin was Minister of Labour so there was no sense of taking a gamble. They were known quantities in government.

And Churchill and the Tories ran a dreadful campaign. Churchill made one election broadcast saying that socialism would eventually a secret police just like the Gestappo - Attlee famously thanked him for showing the country between "Churchill the great war leader and Churchill the peacetime politician". For some reason Churchill just couldn't get crowds going either - there's a famous example of a crowd turning in Wolverhampton and he once gave Attlee a lift (Attlee couldn't drive and when he was campaigning was normally driven by his wife who was apparently fearsome and absolutely loved a bit of speed ) and told Attlee that his tactics weren't working: "I've tried them with pap and I've tried them with pep and I still don't know what they want."

Obviously Churchill was re-elected in 1951 so it wasn't all over.

But I think covid has the potential to permanently shift opinions in the way the war did because the state has had to do so much more and give money to people to survive I sort of feel like it won't just return to normal.

[Jacob]

Ironically I think Churchill's own propaganda helped unseat him. He kept assuring the UK that if they just kept sacrificing a little while longer great times were ahead, and the party actually proposing policies for that great time was the Labour Party not his. Whoops.

Yeah that makes sense.

If that's the case, I don't think the parallel to Trudeau's situation is that useful. Trudeau isn't facing a broad swathe of "here's how we'll make your lives better after the sacrifice" policy proposals from Singh nor O'Toole.

[Sheilbh]

Ironically I think Churchill's own propaganda helped unseat him. He kept assuring the UK that if they just kept sacrificing a little while longer great times were ahead, and the party actually proposing policies for that great time was the Labour Party not his. Whoops.

To an extent - all of the parties were signed up to parts of the Beveridge Report to build a welfare system against the "five giants": want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. So the reason the post-war Labour government didn't pass large-scale education reforms is because the wartime government did in 1944 (led by a Tory minister - Rab Butler).

I think the bigger point was everyone thought the future would be some form of planned economy, especially following the war, and Labour were more comfortable with that. So Labour had a vision of fully implementing Beveridge, but also nationalisation and using the economy for the good of the country. The Tories ran on parts of Beveridge but letting the economy recover in a more private sector way. It wasn't in the mood of the time which was about planning and great national effort etc.

In 1951 Labour were the more exhausted vision-less party - they'd implemented most of Beveridge, they'd nationalised most major industries, so there wasn't much left to achieve. While the Tories could run on loosening state control of the economy a little bit etc.

[Barrister]

Sloan's out.

[Malthus]

Ironically I think Churchill's own propaganda helped unseat him. He kept assuring the UK that if they just kept sacrificing a little while longer great times were ahead, and the party actually proposing policies for that great time was the Labour Party not his. Whoops.

Yeah that makes sense.

If that's the case, I don't think the parallel to Trudeau's situation is that useful. Trudeau isn't facing a broad swathe of "here's how we'll make your lives better after the sacrifice" policy proposals from Singh nor O'Toole.

Hence my earlier comment about being surprised by Singh not making more of a splash. If I were NDP leader, I'd be saying as loud as I could something along the lines of 'the emergency shows why we need to pull together as a society and enact more socialist measures - and here is our plan for that'.

Way I think the parallel with Churchill may have merit, is that successfully surmounting a crisis may not engender electoral success in the future. Not saying this will happen, of course.

[Barrister]

Hence my earlier comment about being surprised by Singh not making more of a splash. If I were NDP leader, I'd be saying as loud as I could something along the lines of 'the emergency shows why we need to pull together as a society and enact more socialist measures - and here is our plan for that'.

Way I think the parallel with Churchill may have merit, is that successfully surmounting a crisis may not engender electoral success in the future. Not saying this will happen, of course.

I just don't know if that's in the DNA of today's NDP.  They're much more concerned with the woke social justice policies than good old-fashioned "socialism".

[crazy canuck]

Hence my earlier comment about being surprised by Singh not making more of a splash. If I were NDP leader, I'd be saying as loud as I could something along the lines of 'the emergency shows why we need to pull together as a society and enact more socialist measures - and here is our plan for that'.

Way I think the parallel with Churchill may have merit, is that successfully surmounting a crisis may not engender electoral success in the future. Not saying this will happen, of course.

I just don't know if that's in the DNA of today's NDP.  They're much more concerned with the woke social justice policies than good old-fashioned "socialism".

link?

[Jacob]

I just don't know if that's in the DNA of today's NDP.  They're much more concerned with the woke social justice policies than good old-fashioned "socialism".

... at least that's the line the Conservatives are taking in Alberta provincial politics since the NDP has proven a capable governing party.