The polls are historically bad, but Justin Trudeau seems determined to hang on until he has to call an election which is reported to be generating panic among Liberal backbenchers. Any Liberal Party leader is tough to unseat, but especially Trudeau after the most recent changes to the party’s operating rules instituted after he became party leader.
Image from Blazing Cat Fur
Could the season of Thanksgiving see the fall of Justin Trudeau?
Unlikely, but there will be no Happy Thanksgiving for the prime minister as he contemplates rebellious Liberal MPs trying to engineer a palace coup.
Such news may not surprise Trudeau, but the fact that it is now public is a starting gun. It is at times such as these that Sherlock Holmes tells trusty sidekick Watson, “The game’s afoot”.
As Trudeau returns from a trip to Asia, he is likely to hunker down with his faithful entourage to plot strategy while plotting of another kind will be on the minds of the Gang of 20 (the approximate number of Liberal MPs said to have signed a document in support of replacing the prime minister before the next election.)
The Toronto Star first reported on Friday that “anxious Liberals” were worried about the state of the party under Trudeau. People were saying on the doorstep that “your guy’s gotta go,” while one party source said two dozen sitting MPs were deciding whether to run again at the next election.
Fast exits and furry rodents are all associated with sinking ships.
The Star quoted Wayne Long, the only serving Liberal so far to publicly call for Trudeau to quit as leader, saying, “The status quo is leading us to obliteration”.
Party leaders never want to hear the word obliteration when it refers to their own electoral fortunes and certainly not when it comes from the mouth of one of their own MPs.
But Trudeau probably isn’t even listening to the shrill chorus of the caucus. Why now, after nine years, should he start listening to his members?
Meanwhile, the CBC reported that Liberal MPs were meeting in rooms across Parliament Hill to sign a document that pledged them to call on Trudeau to resign. They were signing their own names and “in ink”, said CBC’s David Cochrane, making it sound like a Faustian bargain rather than a parliamentary coup.
Perhaps it is?
