[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

If playing soccer would shut Gretzky up, I am all for it.

To be fair Gretzky hasn't been saying anything.

But he has been hanging out with Trump, and Trump keeps bragging about it.

[crazy canuck]

Hey China and India, any interest in selecting our next PM?

excerpt from the Globe Editorial piece

That race, necessitated by Justin Trudeau's impending resignation, will not be just any leadership contest, because the winner will automatically become prime minister of Canada.

In spite of that, a party spokesman confirmed this week that the Liberals have no immediate plans to tighten membership eligibility rules that were put in place long before the shadow of foreign interference fell across the land.

If left unchanged, the rules will mean any person aged 14 and over who signs up for a Liberal membership card 41 days or more before the leadership vote (date yet to be determined) can have a direct say in the selection of the country's next prime minister.

There is no requirement for them to be citizens or permanent residents of Canada. They simply need to "ordinarily live" here, a vague qualification that the party says includes foreign students and any of the other three million non-permanent residents currently in the country.

[viper37]

CLP leaderhip race.
Start
Electoral defeat

[crazy canuck]

 

[Josephus]

There's a columnist in The Star today who agrees with what I've been saying for a while. Whoever becomes Liberal leader will get creamed in the next election and will not be the leader in the next election four years later.
So, really, the next leader will be an "asterisk" leader, like Stephane Dion. Which, as I've stated now for a while, begs the question, why would someone like Freeland run?
We shall see.

[Barrister]

There's a columnist in The Star today who agrees with what I've been saying for a while. Whoever becomes Liberal leader will get creamed in the next election and will not be the leader in the next election four years later.
So, really, the next leader will be an "asterisk" leader, like Stephane Dion. Which, as I've stated now for a while, begs the question, why would someone like Freeland run?
We shall see.

I think the answer is pretty easy.

You're potentially running to be the leader of 40 million Canadians.  You have to have a pretty healthy ego to think you're up to the task in any event.  So it's no surprise why someone with such a large ego would see the current Liberal party and think "you know, I think I'm the person to turn this around".

It's the same reason Trudeau hung on for so long - he thought he, alone, could fix things.

[crazy canuck]

Agreed, and in addition to having a healthy ego, the person needs to be able to raise 350k almost immediately.  The person who has both will likely think they can do a simple thing like win an election.

Also, it would be easy to convince oneself that most of the Liberal party problem is Trudeau.   Because that is reality.  The would be leader's view of themselves being sufficiently different from Trudeau is where the self delusion might occur - cough - Freeland - cough.

[Barrister]

There's a columnist in The Star today who agrees with what I've been saying for a while. Whoever becomes Liberal leader will get creamed in the next election and will not be the leader in the next election four years later.
So, really, the next leader will be an "asterisk" leader, like Stephane Dion. Which, as I've stated now for a while, begs the question, why would someone like Freeland run?
We shall see.

So - why will the next leader NOT be the leader in the next election?

So going through the recent past...

John Turner was allowed to lead the party in 1984 - but again in 1988.  The party could easily see that the 1984 loss was Trudeau's fault.

Stephan Dion... he was leader after Martin - but Martin resigned after losing the 2006 election.  So by 2008 Dion was running on his own merits.  He was also terrible - and his handling of the 2008 coalition talks was awful.  Do you remember how the Liberals sent out a video statement from Dion in response to Harper that was all fuzzy, out of focus, and with poor sound quality?

Ignatieff - now running against an incumbent party, saw the party drop to third place and it's worst-ever showing.  But even then - I suspect Ignatieff would have been allowed to stay if he wanted to.

I think it just comes down to whomever the next leader is - do they want to do the hard work of being an opposition leader for 4 years?  Do they want to do the rubber chicken circuit, hit up countless church basements and community halls, to try and rebuild the Liberal Party?  If they do the job is theirs, I think.

But the job of opposition leader also is hardly glamorous.  Carney and Freeland - used to being big figures on the world stage - might not be up for it.  I have no idea what Clark has been up to for the past 7 years.  Both Clark and Freeland were only ever in opposition fairly briefly, both early in their careers.  Carney of course has never been in politics, and as either a senior bureaucrat or Bank Governor was always at the centre of the action.

Oh and I forgot - Liberal Party is unlikely to even be the leader of the opposition.  They're likely to be the third party - or maybe even the fourth party.

[crazy canuck]

One of the great what ifs of Canadian politics (in addition the obvious one of how much better off we would be politically if Layton had not died) is what if Rae wasn't just the interim leader but became the permanent leader of the Liberals.

[Barrister]

One of the great what ifs of Canadian politics (in addition the obvious one of how much better off we would be politically if Layton had not died) is what if Rae wasn't just the interim leader but became the permanent leader of the Liberals.

Let's do Layton:

Layton's success in 2011 was a bit of a mirage.  It was based on the relative unpopularity of both the Liberals under Ignatieff and the BQ under Duceppe.  It was the "orange wave" which swept across Quebec - but which they promptly lost most of (admittedly without Layton).  Quebec has done this before - you can think back to the Credistes, or Mulroney's 1984 wave - none of which had any lasting impact on Quebec politics.

Bob Rae?  Nobody was excited about Bob Rae.  He was always tarnished for being a former NDP Premier (and a deeply unpopular one).  He had more political experience than Ignatieff, for sure, but had so very much baggage.

Other famous "What ifs"?

YOu knew I would go here - what if Manning won the CA leadership race instead of Day (whom I voted for)?  Now the result wasn't particularly close, and I don't think a Manning-led CA would have won the election, but it would have been closer, and the party wouldn't have imploded promptly afterwards.  But was the weaker CA what was needed for the PCs to agree to a full merger?

I much more likely (and related) "what if" would be is what if Peter Mackay and David Orchard hadn't signed their agreement, and Orchard had won the PC Leadership?  He explicitly ran on an anti-free trade, anti-merger with the CA, platform.  I doubt very much that was the road to electoral success for the PC Party, but it would have meant any CA-PC merger would be more delayed and no Harper government in 2006.

Of course the ultimate "what if" is - what if the "Yes" side won the 1995 referendum.

[Grey Fox]

Isn't that CCs point. Layton died so we never got to find out if he could build on the aftermath of the Orange wave.

[Barrister]

Isn't that CCs point. Layton died so we never got to find out if he could build on the aftermath of the Orange wave.

Of course.

I am suggesting that Layton building on the "orange wave" was highly unlikely, as it was built on a particular set of circumstances in 2011, and that Quebec has a bit of a history of "waves" that don't go anywhere.

Remember Layton, from Toronto, was succeeded by Quebecker Tom Mulcair who couldn't keep those gains.

[Grey Fox]

Of course not, Mulcair was a pretty right wing pro-environment Liberal provincial minister that was moving the NDP towards the center against a resurging LPC with Trudeau at it's head moving it left. And anglophone. He had nowhere to go. It was a poor choice.

[crazy canuck]

BB, I think Manning was in the same boat as Rae, nobody outside of his past supporters were particularly excited about him.  The only folks who would have been interested is some percentage of the original Reform supporters.  At his height of popularity he could not attract much support beyond his Western Canadian base.

I think you are wrong about Layton, people liked him. His support was not because of a dislike of others.  If he had lived I think the NDP would have easily won a majority in 2015. And none of us would have had to live through the Trudeau years.  The other thing that probably would have happened is that there would have been a defacto amalgamation of the NDP and Liberals, as Liberal supporters migrated to the NDP.  Outside of Quebec, we probably would only have two competitive parties now.

But we will never know.