They'll All Be Gone

Michael Harris believes that none of our national party leaders will be around for the next election:

The leader most likely to go quickly is Annamie Paul. The bitter feuding inside the Green Party of Canada was big news for weeks before the election was called. Paul and the party’s national council racked up crushing legal bills fighting each other. In politics as in life, it never pays to air one’s dirty laundry in public.

The Greens did just that, so a fair question emerged for voters: how could you trust the GPC to manage the climate, the pandemic, and the economy when they couldn’t manage their own party?

Then there is Jagmeet Singh, who is likable but going nowhere:

Based on the results of the election, a very basic question has to be asked by the NDP rank-and-file. Has this leader reached the ceiling of support that he can reasonably be expected to attract to the party?

After spending $25 million on the campaign, he got virtually the same result as the party achieved in 2019. The NDP remains the fourth party in Parliament. Even when the NDP crashed and burned under Thomas Mulcair, it won 44 seats.

Voters clearly didn’t buy into Singh’s strategy of taking credit for things the Liberals actually did to support Canadians during the current pandemic.

Erin O'Toole tried to resurrect the Progressive Conservative Party. But the party's base was having none of it:

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is dead man walking after this election. His calculated transformation from a social conservative into Tommy Douglas was a giant bellyflop at the box-office.

No one believed him. He not only won fewer seats than the hapless Andrew Scheer, but he damaged the party brand. Shortly after O’Toole conceded defeat, the Campaign Life Coalition gave him the first of what will be many kicks to the meat pies over this botched election.

The CLC accused O’Toole of “alienating” the party’s social conservative base “with his shameless support for abortion, LGBT ideology, oppressive lockdowns and liberty-destroying passports.... By insulting the base, O’Toole drove CPC voters into the waiting arms of Maxime Bernier.”

Given the short shrift afforded Scheer when he failed to unseat Trudeau, there is no reason to believe that O’Toole will be around long. The party’s leadership review and election postmortem will do one of two things: give O’Toole a swift career-path change; or hopelessly divide the CPC into two, mutually exclusive camps — the social conservatives and the progressives.

Then there is Justin -- who, Harris believes, will be eased out of office:

Unlike the other leaders whose tenure is dubious at best, Trudeau will be eased, not forced, out. In politics, the shelf life for rock stars is the same as it is for garden variety politicians. Around about the eight to 10-year mark, you don’t sparkle anymore. You wear out your welcome as the baggage of governing mounts, the public grows tired of you, and the usually fatal urge for change sets in.

Trudeau didn’t deliver a majority, his popularity is waning, and he just put the country through an election that cost over half a billion dollars to deliver a kind of Groundhog Day of politics.

But the difference between Trudeau’s farewell tour and the other federal leaders is that his will be managed. In other words, around about the two-year mark of his latest mandate, he will decide that he wants to spend more time with his family, etc., etc., and the Liberal party will come up with a new face to try to dazzle, divert and seduce the public.

There will be lots of new faces the next time around. The question is: Will the parties change?

Image: timescolonist.com