A Liberal Death March?

"Prime Ministerial Hopefuls" by aw.reeves84  licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 

I see nobody saying it yet, but I think we may be witnessing not just the end of the Trudeau government, but the death of the Canadian Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party is technically centre-left, but the traditional concept was to straddle the centre consensus whatever it was, and so to be the Natural Governing Party.

This works very well so long as it works, and then it doesn’t. With a more ideological party to the right, and another ideological party to the left, this centre ground can disappear. When it does, there is no continuing ideological commitment to hold the troops together during lean years, without the prospect of power. The prospect of power us generally the reason anyone becomes a Liberal.

Being ruled from the bland centre tends to suit the Canadian character. But this dynamic long ago reduced the UK Liberal Party to eternal irrelevance. It has already, seemingly without much notice, squeezed out the Liberal Party across Western Canada, from Lake of the Woods to the Pacific, although the name alone survives in BC. Under Ralph Klein, the Alberta Liberals were the opposition. This time, against Kenney’s United Conservatives, they could not manage a seat. Ontario’s Liberals have gone in one campaign from majority government to surrendering party status. In PEI, they just went from government to trailing the Greens.

A centre-consensus party does not fit the tenor of these highly partisan times. The left elsewhere is craving its Bernie Sanders and its Jeremy Corbin. Joe Biden has just launched in defiance of this trend, banking on the idea that folks are tired of the tumult and want to move more to the neighbourly centre. We’ll see how that goes. My bet is against him taking the nomination, much less the election.

Why is this polarization happening so much more recently?

There are several reasons, but I think it may have to do in part with an overlooked aspect of the newer communications technologies. As the Saint John Telegraph Journal once put it, “Most people can hold their breath longer than Liberals can hold their principles.” In the days when yesterday’s paper was good for no more than lining a parakeet cage, people tended not to notice when you campaigned against wage and price controls, then imposed wage and price controls; when you campaigned to end free trade and the GST, then didn’t. Which happens a lot when you are only trying to straddle the centre and reflect the current consensus view. But the Internet now gives us all easy access to life’s “long tail.” We can do a quick web search on “free trade,” and see immediately how you are now saying and doing the opposite of what you said.

This is now catching up with a lot of politicians, in a lot of different ways. #Metoo and other issues of personal conduct is one other small part of it. There was a time when a politician could more or less get over a Chappaquiddick or a rape accusation. People tended to forget. Now a chance word in somebody’s high school yearbook can return to haunt you. The long tail.

We seem to generally have barely noticed, as well, that the Liberals were already the third party federally before the last election. They had failed electorally under three successive leaders. They were down to 34 seats. The convention that chose Trudeau might have been held in a phone booth. Turning to Justin Trudeau as leader was something of a “Hail Mary” pass, as someone put it. It turned out, against the odds, to work. But that does not mean it will work again.

And as things fall apart, there is reason to suppose this Humpty cannot be put back together. If the Liberals authentically fall out of contention for power, they are doomed.

The one thing that may save the Liberals is the folly of the NDP. Last election, under Mulcair, they moved to the centre, hoping to compete with the Liberals for their usual turf, the middle ground. That fit the conventional political wisdom, but it did not fit the times. The electorate unexpectedly opted instead for Trudeau, precisely because he was the more leftward, hope’n’change choice. Had Mulcair tipped left instead of right, he might well be prime minister today.

But the NDP it seems have still not learned that lesson. They seem to have chosen Jagmeet Singh as a Trudeau clone, and he has not clearly distinguished them since on policy. Same mistake. What the NDP needed was not a smiling, non-threatening face, but a fire-breather who looks like an outsider committed to change. Someone more in the mold of old Dave Barrett. As they are going, they may risk losing even their third-place status to the Greens. 

Dave Barrett: last of the red-hot socialists?

The same advice applies to the Tories, actually—they’d have done better with Bernier or some other caustic grenade-thrower able to convey an air of righteous indignation the way Diefenbaker once did. They are likely to win now regardless; but only for lack of a less respectable (stet) alternative. Polling suggests their support is spongey-soft: it is anti-Trudeau far more than it is pro-Scheer. Somebody else could peel voters off suddenly—witness how quickly Nigel Farage’s brand-new Brexit Party in the UK has overtaken both the Tories and Labour in polls for the upcoming EU elections. Bernier could still do that with a strong campaign.

The voters want to feel their collective toe connecting with somebody’s complacent posterior. The big winner I think will be whichever federal party first figures that out and gives it to them. People are in the mood for some solid rock and roll, not more bubble gum. But this is intrinsically least likely to be the Liberals, among whom the bland are always leading the bland.