Removing a head of government, chosen by the people in a general election, should be a difficult thing in a democracy. The defenestration of President Joe Biden over the summer likely taught some wrong lessons in that regard.
The federal Liberal caucus has discovered that difficulty over the past few months, culminating in a meeting this week that was a bit of a damp squib. Perhaps in the new age of the new Trudeau, the Liberals do not remember their own history. Paul Martin’s millennial ambition to dethrone Jean Chrétien was a multi-year effort involving a massive amount of clandestine manoeuvring, not a plaintive letter with fewer than two dozen signatories.
Unlike the Conservatives greasing the skids under Erin O’Toole in 2022, there appears to be no policy dimension to the effort to send Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into retirement. O’Toole had frustrated his caucus by campaigning for the leadership as “true blue” and then occupying the actual office in more pastel shades.
The mother of all expulsions was wrought at the mother of parliaments, when the British Tories threw out Margaret Thatcher, the most consequential prime minister since Churchill’s first premiership. Her declining popularity played a role — which is not out-of-bounds in a democracy — but there were substantial policy issues at stake, not least over Europe, which is to Britain what the national unity and constitutional issue is to Canada.
The Biden drama of the summer is misunderstood as a party trading in an unpopular likely loser for a less unpopular potential winner. Presidents with declining popularity do run for re-election and lose (Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr.). It’s unpleasant for their party but not a crisis requiring extraordinary measures.
The Biden withdrawal is at heart a scandal story. A great number of people — including the first lady, Vice-President Kamala Harris and the president’s senior staff — knew that he was cognitively compromised. With the help of a compliant Washington press corps, there was a concerted attempt to hide this from the American people, while an alternative falsehood was propagated, namely that Biden was in tip-top mental shape. Even now, Harris has not expressed any second thoughts about Biden’s mental capabilities.
After his June debate performance, a scandal was about to erupt. His campaign would be plagued by a long, painful investigative scandal. When did the president not know what he was doing, and when did everyone around him know that? Who told what lies? Were any told under oath?
That scandal threatened more than just Biden, but the elite of the Democratic establishment. Scandal is the quickest route to get rid of someone, and a massive scandal was at hand. Out went the president.
The imperative of defeating Donald Trump united the Biden insiders with the press corps in hiding his decline. That imperative still holds, so the scandal has been contained to date. But after the election, even if Harris wins, it will return and there will be consequences, not only for the conduct of administration officials, but for the credibility of journalists.
There is no scandal with Trudeau — or, better to say, he has survived his conflict of interest violations, and the various scandals which have cost him his principal secretary, clerk of the privy council, a current governor general, a former governor general, a speaker of the House, a finance minister, an attorney general and a treasury board president. So the Biden precedent does not apply.
The Thatcher and Chrétien precedents are more applicable, even if they won three thumping majorities each, while Trudeau has won one majority and two minorities, both of which included losses in the popular vote.
This past week King Charles III was in Australia, on his inaugural visit to one of his realms. (Canada should have been, and would have been, first, but His Majesty’s May visit was postponed due to cancer treatments.) As is always the case on royal visits Down Under, there was much talk about the Westminster constitutional arrangements of Crown-in-parliament.
The reality is that in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, the arrangements have proven remarkably creative and adaptable when it comes to balancing the role of the parliamentary caucus vis-à-vis a leader chosen by the party membership. The British Tories have their powerful 1922 Committee, and the Aussies have similar protocols that have been modified several times by both parties. Canada’s Reform Act offers the same options here, but the Liberals refused to take advantage of it.
So they are stuck, but only for a short while, until Trudeau inevitably steps down in the first quarter of next year, as his father did in 1984 and Brian Mulroney did in 1993. But that’s a column for another day.
National Post