The first rule of regicide is: “if you come for the king, you best not miss.”
Another useful axiom is that, when you are poised to act, don’t have word leak out just before a long weekend, ahead of a break week, and a full 12 days before you can rally support at the next caucus meeting.
The incipient mutiny of Liberal backbenchers sounded credible when first reported by the Toronto Star, with as many as 40 MPs said to have signed their name to a letter calling for Justin Trudeau to step down as Liberal leader.
But if the coup had legs, sources now suggest it has lost them.
Appointing the experienced Andrew Bevan to run the next election campaign has apparently provided a release valve for some of the frustration.
One of the biggest complaints among the band of dissenting MPs was reputedly that the party was not doing anything to help them get re-elected. The announcement of Bevan’s appointment on the weekend has apparently persuaded a couple of cabinet ministers who intended to put their names on the fabled document to think again.
If Bevan moves quickly to put out a plausible plan, the refuseniks may find their numbers beginning to ebb.
By establishing who is not going to run again, and by dangling the carrot of a potential cabinet shuffle before Christmas, the Prime Minister’s Office could isolate the protagonists of what seemed a genuine threat to Trudeau’s leadership.
Restive supporters are an inevitable part of politics. Louis XIV, the Sun King, is said to have remarked that every time he filled a vacant office he created “10 malcontents and one ingrate.”
Even in Trudeau’s honeymoon period after the 2015 election victory, there was grumbling in the Liberal ranks. New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, for example, voted against his government’s small business tax in 2017, long before he called for the prime minister to resign this year.
Back then, there was a feeling that Trudeau had single-handedly resurrected the Liberal party, politically and financially, and he would remain leader for as long as he wanted.
That spell was broken by the SNC-Lavalin affair in early 2019, when Trudeau presided over a mess that saw him lose two ministers (Jody Wilson Raybould and Jane Philpott), his most trusted adviser (Gerald Butts), the country’s most senior public servant (Michael Wernick), his reputation for probity and his party’s lead in the polls.
From that point on, the Liberals have leaked support, and discontent in the caucus has grown. The charge, even among many of his own MPs, is that he abandoned the rising anxiety of “the middle class, and those seeking to join it” to focus on identity politics.
When I wrote my book on Trudeau in 2019, Liberal MPs complained then about the “relentless attempt to woo left-of-centre voters … (even though) we’re the party of the middle.”
Trudeau had promised to forge consensus and bridge partisan divides; his autobiography was even titled: Common Ground. Yet he found there was political advantage to be gained in targeting anyone deemed privileged.
Another Liberal MP at the time scoffed at the idea that the previous Harper Conservative government was more guilty of playing the politics of division. “That’s nonsense. We’re more polarizing than they ever were. I don’t think that’s sunk in yet. I don’t think Justin intuits that — or if he does, he thinks it’s worth the gamble and thinks he can win with that kind of polarization,” the MP said.
The SNC affair ended Trudeau’s aura of infallibility and disturbed what John Stuart Mill once called “the deep slumber of decided opinion.”
One Liberal MP said that the disappointment in caucus was palpable. “This was a crisis and Trudeau was found wanting,” he said. “The caucus is united in a desire to get re-elected. It is not necessarily united in a desire to get re-elected behind him.”
That sentiment has resurfaced. There is very little residual personal loyalty to Trudeau, who has not expended much of his energy on caucus relations.
Yet now, as then, there is no obvious candidate to replace the prime minister — at least not one who would demonstrably improve the re-election prospects of the Liberal party.
The immediate danger to Trudeau is probably past, but it will bubble up again if he persists with his messianic belief that success will be achieved by “doubling down on the things we know are going to get us to better, which is more protection of the environment, more inclusion of people,” as he recently declared.
All the data suggest voters want change, not more of the same — starting with a switch at the very top.
Any hopes of revival rest on the Liberals talking about things that address the economic opportunities of the middle class they once championed, which probably means jettisoning the consumer carbon tax. There is a sizeable number of Liberal MPs who would like to see the back of that millstone, regardless of the body of economists who argue about its efficacy.
Yet there are no signs that Trudeau is prepared to listen to his backbench.
Unlike the Conservatives, who adopted Michael Chong’s Reform Act, the Liberals voted down the proposal that allows 20 per cent of the caucus to call for a leadership review.
Just as the Sun King believed he ruled by divine right, the leader of the modern Liberal party enjoys an age of centralized absolutism that is built to resist change.
Twitter.com/IvisonJ
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