They were completely out for the count and up to 26 points behind the Conservatives in January. To subsequently win a plurality of seats and be in position to govern is the sort of stuff they make movies about.
There were some unique circumstances in that election. Replacing the shop-worn increasingly toxic Justin Trudeau with a prominent and serious household name in Mark Carney was a big part of the story, but normally that would be enough to just limit the loss rather than completely turn the tide.
The big assist was US President Donald Trump and his full-frontal attack on Canadian sovereignty. Carney was able to capture the anti-US sentiment that followed much more effectively than his opponent Pierre Poilievre, and the job was done.
Poilievre’s mistake turned out to be to style himself too much on being the Canadian version of Trump. That worked for him right up until January, because Trump seemed to represent the political zeitgeist, a new and successful brand of radical populist conservative politics.
However, Canadians soured on Trump once he started musing about Canada as the 51st state and making it clear that under his rule everyone else but the United States could get stuffed.
That quickly morphed into a rejection of all things remotely Maga, including Poilievre.
So much for Canada.
Australians vote in their federal election this weekend and it is always dangerous writing about an election before it happens.
What does appear clear though is that the Albanese Labor Party, which just months ago risked being the first single-term federal government in ages, has consolidated significantly. It is now odds on to win at least a minority government tonight.
If he does lose the election, Opposition leader Peter Dutton too is likely to rue hewing too close to the Trump populist model. It seems that even being a watered-down version of Trump does not play as well now outside the United States.
Or possibly even within it. The Maga movement’s popularity is declining rapidly as the real impacts of Trump’s bumper sticker slogans on the economy become more apparent.
With due deference to the President’s claim that pollsters, with mainstream journalists, the swamp, and the elite are all conspiring against his wonderfully popular Government, he’s tanking with the American public.
To me, the only way back will be to continue his screeching economic policy U-turns until there is pretty much nothing left. At which point only extreme loyalists will be able to convince themselves the whole policy platform was part of a fiendishly clever triple-feint master plan, while the rest of the world will wonder what the point of it all was.
I think what we are seeing unfold is a political lesson for the political right which was only recently also dealt to the political left. That lesson is that, despite appearances, social media isn’t the real world, and you can’t govern as if it is.
The left’s moment of learning came in the mid to late 2010s leading up to 2022. This was the period where identity politics was all the rage, and the phrases “pile on” and “being cancelled” entered the lexicon.
Across the social media platforms and especially on Twitter, the identity trolls ruled the roost, and woe betide anyone who thought outside the mandated social construct.
Left-leaning parties virtue-signalled their way to electoral success.
This was the time of the Trudeaus and the Arderns; where being kind meant identifying with some views, and being intolerant of everyone else.
The key point is that this was fed by the social media echo chamber which looks like the mainstream, but isn’t. The left, and many journalists, made the political mistake of thinking the views of Twitter were shared by everyone.
They lost touch with middle voters and, as a result, for the most part were unceremoniously booted out.
The Maga movement is in part a reaction to identity politics, but I think it, too, is making the same mistake.
In 2022 Elon Musk took over Twitter, rebranded it to X, and it has quickly become the echo chamber of the populist right, a mirror image of what Twitter was to the left.
Trump unashamedly plays to that social media/Fox News crowd, giving voice to every bar room expert’s unfettered opinions.
Indeed, he reminds me of that loud mouth at the bar who has a simple answer to everything, from “building a wall” to charging foreigners for the privilege of trading with his country.
The only trouble being that the simple solutions often don’t stack up in a complex world. At which point you start to lose the quieter crowd, who are just trying to pay the bills and get ahead.
As in many things, social media is a magnification and acceleration of what used to happen in real-life forums. When I went into politics, I learnt that the National Party membership and activist base did not accurately represent the broad middle of New Zealand voters, and if you follow their policy prescription exactly, yours would be a long, pure, and unsuccessful political life on the opposition benches.
The same applies to the Labour Party, I’m sure. Their most vocal active partisans are not likely to be mainstream in their views, because they are, by definition, more motivated than most in rejecting the status quo.
In our case, we learnt to respect the views of party members and the sense of direction they provided, but understand that the path to political success was through the median voter.
I don’t think that’s changed. Just substitute social media tribes for political party membership. The trick, as always, is to govern from the political centre, or at least the centre-right or centre-left.
That doesn’t mean you don’t try new or even radical policy directions. Just that the path to acceptance of those policies is by convincing the majority, and not just winning the applause of social media denizens.
And by remembering always that most people don’t ever post on Twitter/X, which is in the end no more than the citizen band radio of our times.
Playing to the narrow base in politics is never durable, wherever they hang out. Politicians either learn that lesson themselves, or the less visible but more numerous ordinary voter teaches it to them.
