Paul Wells: The biggest question in Canadian politics in 2022 is whether Trudeau will still be PM when the year is done. The Grits may be forced to consider life after him—and what they even stand for without him.
On Sept. 20, voters returned a Parliament that will look a lot like the one Justin Trudeau was stuck with before he called the 2021 election. But one big thing did change. In conversation, senior Liberals were remarkably candid about discussing the last days of Justin Trudeau’s government, and the prospect of a government led by somebody else.
This sort of talk is new. In a party whose unity of purpose Trudeau did much to restore, it’s long been considered poor form, or wasted energy, for Liberals to contemplate the prospect of life without the leader who brought them back from the brink of irrelevance. This fall, that taboo lifted. It’s as though a screw that had secured some plate in the Liberals’ psyche for nearly a decade had been loosened by one full counterclockwise turn.
Nowhere is it written that a political leader needs to be beloved. All they really need to do is win. In September Trudeau won his third consecutive election. Excellent work, but not all that rare. Seven of his predecessors also won three in a row, including Stephen Harper, Jean Chrétien and Pierre Trudeau. What would be truly unusual would be racking up a fourth consecutive win. Only John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier have ever managed it.
If you’re François-Philippe Champagne or Mélanie Joly or Mark Carney or Anita Anand—names that often figure in speculation about Trudeau successors—you have to ask yourself two questions, starting right now.
But it’s probably early to be measuring the prospects of individual candidates who haven’t yet even identified themselves. Liberals face a bigger question: what kind of party do they want to be? If pressed to explain themselves, Trudeau Liberals would insist that, far from limiting its electoral fortunes, the contemporary party’s wokeness has actually bolstered and ensured its electoral success. Trudeau didn’t defeat any of three consecutive Conservative leaders thanks to his superior ability as an economic manager. He won as a superior reader of the cultural moment.
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