No way to recover when the calls are coming from inside the house

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/01/2025 (317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the world of professional sports, commentators often talk about how head coaches get fired because they “lost the dressing room.” It’s a phrase meant to describe the moment coaches lose the confidence of the people they are charged with leading.

Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t a coach. But history will show he lost not one, but two rooms.

First, he lost the confidence of the citizenry, who had grown fond of blaming him for everything that was wrong in their lives. Even things for which no prime minister of any persuasion should be blamed.

And then, after losing the country, he lost the confidence of his own party.

Some observers may find the order of these events to be rather perverse; that Trudeau would agree to step down as Liberal leader not because of his woeful public support, but following an open revolt by his caucus. But for anyone who has ever toiled in high-level politics, it makes perfect sense.

Political leaders can always mitigate concerns over a loss of public support with baseless faith that they can somehow win voters back before election day. But when the people who sell memberships and knock on doors say they are no longer willing to follow you into battle, there is really no rationale for staying as leader.

How and why Trudeau went from being one of the most popular prime ministers in history to one of the most disparaged will be analyzed and debated for years to come. However, the one inescapable reality that Trudeau refused to accept is that the political world, both here and abroad, has changed dramatically since 2013, when Trudeau seized the party leadership.

Back then, Trudeau’s youthful good looks and his advanced retail political skills made him the perfect candidate to take down a Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s tired and cynical government.

Back then, Trudeau’s youthful good looks and his advanced retail political skills made him the perfect candidate to take down a Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s tired and cynical government.

While Harper leaned into social conservatism, immigration and crime, Trudeau wrapped himself in progress and compassion. This was never more clear than on the evening of Oct. 19, 2015, federal election night, when Trudeau quoted former Liberal prime minister Wilfrid Laurier’s famous speech about “sunny ways” and proclaimed that “politics can be a positive force.”

A decade later, and Trudeau’s sunny ways have been formally bludgeoned by the politics of rage.

It’s really an international phenomenon: back-to-back shock waves from the pandemic and the inflation crisis combined to shake public confidence in incumbent governments. Voter turnout plummeted, and those who are showing up have fully bought into the idea they are worse off in all ways, even when there is objective evidence to the contrary.

Anyone who makes the mistake of saying that things aren’t that bad are instantly pilloried.

Is that the epitaph to Trudeau’s political career? That he waited too long to fashion an effective response to the rage farmers?

The Tories, led by Pierre Poilievre, quickly determined that riding the rage wave put them on the right side of public sentiment. If you felt angry and disadvantaged — and many Canadians did — Poilievre was there to agree with you and assure you things were even worse than you feared.

A decade later, and Trudeau’s sunny ways have been formally bludgeoned by the politics of rage.

Meanwhile, Trudeau naively doubled down on the messaging that helped him win the 2015 election. There are challenges, Trudeau would say, but nothing that we can’t overcome if we work together. Canada was the greatest country in the world, not the crime-infested, inflation-ravaged cesspool that Poilievre claimed it had become.

There were many moments when it seemed that Trudeau simply could not imagine losing to a party and a leader who distort, exaggerate and deliberately mislead Canadians about the performance of the Liberal government and the general state of the nation.

The carbon tax made groceries unaffordable and, even if they were more modestly priced, people can’t afford the gasoline to drive to the grocery store. The Liberal government manufactured high inflation through reckless monetary policy. Trudeau has, through his indifference, allowed criminals to ravage the country.

All these allegations are largely false but that doesn’t mean they are not persuasive. Trudeau ignored Poilievre’s relentless attacks right up until the moment he was forced to relinquish his sword and shield and surrender in disgrace.

It must be said that Trudeau was not just a victim of a seismic shift in political sensibilities. The prime minister seemed addicted to self-inflicted wounds.

It must be said that Trudeau was not just a victim of a seismic shift in political sensibilities. The prime minister seemed addicted to self-inflicted wounds that fit perfectly into Poilievre’s offensive.

Every free trip to a billionaire’s tropical island, each time he or his ministers were found to be in a conflict of interest, each snapshot of him in blackface helped reinforce the idea that Trudeau was an aloof elite with no affinity for the general public.

Last May, I had the opportunity to interview him for an episode of the podcast I do with fellow Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair. It was our opportunity to ask the prime minister about whether he had any thoughts of stepping down.

In that moment, Trudeau was unapologetically confident he would fight the next election. He said he didn’t have the time to think about “what if” it were time to stand down because he was fighting for Canadians.

“I’m not thinking about ‘what if’ one day. I’m focused on today and tomorrow.”

Clearly, tomorrow has come. It just wasn’t the tomorrow Trudeau was hoping for.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca