People celebrate after the second round of the French legislative elections at Place de la Republic in Paris, on July 7.DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/The New York Times News Service
Canadian politicians watching the elections in France and Britain have seen three strategies of attack and defence on display, and three horses for politicians to ride, or to force their opponents to ride.
They are Incumbency, Fear and Competence.
Incumbency weighs like a millstone around the neck of every government these days, be it left, right or centre. The opposition, in contrast, starts with a lot of helium in its balloon.
But public fear of how the opposition would govern can puncture the balloon.
And competence? An opposition party must overcome voters’ fears, and persuade them that it offers safe hands. As for a government, it has a more difficult task, namely persuading voters that it has governed successfully, or is at least better than the fearful alternative. The longer in government, the harder the climb.
In Britain, the Conservative Party had been in power for 14 years, with a record of missteps and worse. Fear of Labour was a Tory trump card in past elections, but this time around Labour inoculated itself against that, via a leader who publicly went to war with his own left wing. It was part of the strategy to beat the Conservatives, and Sir Keir Starmer is now Prime Minister.
In France, in contrast, the right-wing National Rally failed to persuade enough voters that it is no longer an extremist entity – with the result that Marine Le Pen’s crew, who a week ago were on the verge of winning a parliamentary majority, now find themselves relegated to third place in the seat count.
Which brings us back to Canada.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are running on the unpopularity of the incumbents, along with a claim that the Tories represent common sense and competent administration. If the things eating at you are the carbon tax, housing, crime and the dire state of the budget (which is in fact not so dire, but I digress), then Mr. Poilievre’s slogan – “Axe the tax. Build the homes. Fix the budget. Stop the crime.” – is laser-focused on your concerns.
The U of T occupation was illegal. Why? Because it was an occupation
What is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau running on?
At a press conference last week in Montreal, when repeatedly asked why he wanted to lead the Liberals into the election scheduled for 2025, he kept reaching for one word: continuing. He said it was all about “continuing to deliver for people” and “continuing to be there for Canadians” and “continuing to deliver for Canadians.”
In an era of fury against incumbents – not always deserved, but so it goes – that’s the best the Liberal brain trust has come up with: a pitch based on incumbency.
You can see why some voices within the party are urging the opposite.
The Liberals can’t win on incumbency. And while fear is always going to be part of the Liberal arsenal – and it’s perfectly reasonable to ask voters to ponder what a Conservative administration might do or might cut – it likely won’t be enough this time. “Vote for our unpopular government, because the other guys will be even worse” is awfully weak tea.
What would be a better pitch? The Liberals could promise competent administration and could spend the next year demonstrating it. That’s much harder than Mr. Poilievre’s job, but so it goes. That’s the incumbent’s burden.
However, it can also be the incumbent’s advantage. Governments have the power to do things. That includes undoing previous doings that they didn’t do very well.
The biggest issue for the Liberals, and the country, is the extreme unaffordability of housing. That’s the inflation whammy that socked millions of people, particularly the young, new Canadians and “the middle class and those working hard to join it.”
The Liberals have put forward a rhetorically aggressive plan that positions itself as addressing that – just like Mr. Poilievre, they promise to somehow spark huge levels of new home building. But even under the most optimistic scenarios, such plans will take many years, even decades, to deliver.
That means the Liberals need to steal a page from Mr. Starmer’s Labour. To have a shot, they’ve got to show Canadians that they have changed. Which means running against their own record, at least on this issue.
Housing unaffordability is partly the result of an unprecedented and unplanned jump in non-permanent immigration, far above anything Canada has ever seen, and far above Liberal immigration plans. It was a case of severe government incompetence, and it’s still unclear to what extent the Trudeau administration is actually addressing the mess, as opposed to crafting a comms strategy to fuzzy it. Statistics Canada’s latest estimate of the non-permanent population is 2.8 million, up from less than two million a year ago.
Closing the gap between housing supply and housing demand, by greatly increasing housing supply, will take a long time. It calls for hundreds of thousands more construction workers and hundreds of billions more dollars. It risks bringing other economic distortions. In contrast, closing the gap by reducing population growth can be done quickly.
The Liberals may or may not need a new leader. They won’t win on fear. They can’t win by pitching more of the same. They definitely need a better record to run on.