Changing Their Story.

Situation Normal All Fucked Up: Already weakened by its poor handling of Delta and Omicron, this Government’s botched response to the Freedom Convoy has changed dramatically its political narrative.

IT IS DOUBTFUL whether Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government understands just how completely it has lost control of the political narrative. Most likely, it is operating on the assumption that because most New Zealanders, like most MPs, are appalled at the behaviour of those occupying Parliament Grounds, all is well. It is a false assumption. Like the first victim of the “Freedom Convoy” weapon, Justin Trudeau, the Ardern Government’s refusal to “go hard and go early” against the protesters has created the worst of all political narratives: that it has become weak and ineffectual.

Not only has the occupation of Parliament Grounds made this government look weak, but it has also emboldened and, in the eyes of some, at least, ennobled the occupiers. Swift and decisive action to evict the occupiers was crucial, if only to forestall the creation of a David versus Goliath narrative in which every successful defiance of the forces of law and order only serves to make their movement stronger.

Those who share the occupiers frustration with the Government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, but who have, hitherto, not believed that successful resistance to its policies is possible, have been given cause to think again. They may represent fewer than one-in-ten New Zealanders, but one-in-ten of 5 million is 500,000. If only a tenth of that half-million citizens decided to join the Wellington protest camp, then this Government will very quickly find itself confronting a national security crisis of immense proportions.

It is a genuine mystery why neither the Government, nor the senior Police commanders, were able to grasp the nature of the challenge they were facing. It was clear to every thinking New Zealander that the protest action represented by the “Freedom Convoy” was of a new and potentially extremely dangerous kind. One didn’t have to be a master strategist to understand that once 200-300 motor vehicles converged on the centre of the capital city, the owners of those motor vehicles would, more or less immediately, control the centre of the capital city. New Zealanders knew that they had nothing to fear from protesters who gathered for a couple of hours to deliver their message and then dispersed. But, protesters who came to stay until their demands were met – this was a very different kettle of fish.

New Zealand’s senior police commanders cannot say that they weren’t warned. The Ottawa example was there before them. By failing to break the Canadian truckers’ blockade immediately, the Canadian authorities allowed the protest’s relatively limited set of demands to escalate wildly. Fatally, Prime Minister Trudeau opted to talk tough, but then refused to act tough. The latest poll out of Canada shows only 16 percent of Canadians are satisfied with his handling of the crisis. Trudeau’s failure to deal with the truckers’ protest swiftly and effectively may spell the end of his political career.

While the Policing Act 2008 makes it clear that in operational matters Ministers of the Crown are required to butt right out, there are other ways for the State to assert its duty to protect the rights of the citizenry and the rule of law. It would be interesting to know whether the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination – commonly referred to as ODESC – was convened to address the national security implications of the Freedom Convoy. Chaired by the CEO of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ODESC can bring together all the instruments of the state apparatus required to coordinate an effective response – including the Police and the NZDF.

From the perspective of the ordinary person in the street, however, neither the Prime Minister nor the Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, appeared to be taking the matter very seriously. Indeed, by constantly invoking people’s right to protest, they gave the impression that they were reluctant to do anything more than politely request the protesters to behave themselves and then “move on”. Only the Deputy Prime Minister, Grant Robertson, who, as a former student leader, was familiar with the unwritten rules of the demonstration game, appeared to grasp the qualitative difference between the Freedom Convoy and the protests he had helped to organise.

And then the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, stuck his oar in.

The care and protection of the Parliamentary Precinct is, indisputably, the Speaker’s responsibility. The dignity of the office, and the need to at all times conduct himself professionally, should, however, have persuaded Mallard to limit his involvement to simply declaring the occupiers to be trespassers. The strategy and tactics required for their eviction should then have been left entirely to the Police.

To describe the extraordinary decision of the Speaker’s Office to, first, order the parliamentary ground’s lawn-sprinklers turned on, and then, the following night, to blast loud music across the grounds (presumably in an effort to either dislodge or disturb the occupiers in their tents) as “unfortunate” would be a gross understatement. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of actions more likely to convince the occupiers that they are not dealing with serious people. Mallard’s actions may have hardened the occupiers’ determination to resist. Worse, by responding so childishly, he risks convincing them they can win.

For the long-suffering citizens of Wellington, and the rest of New Zealand looking on, the manifestly inadequate policing tactics employed to move the occupiers from Parliament Grounds, coupled with the Speaker’s ludicrous interventions, have combined to produce a political narrative of weakness, incompetence and pettiness that will be very hard to dispel. The spectacle of unhelmeted constables in their summer shirts, wearing flimsy surgical masks, being sent to stand eyeball-to-eyeball with shrieking, unvaccinated occupiers, was extremely hard to watch. So, too, was the sight of those same constables wading into the flailing, spitting crowd to effect arrests. Where was the Police Association, their union, when these egregious failures of health & safety were unfolding?

More to the point, where were the force multipliers essential to any operation in which hundreds of police officers are pitted against thousands of aggressively resisting protesters? How many games would have gone ahead during the Springbok Tour of 1981 if the then Police Commissioner, Bob Walton, had confronted HART’s protesters with unhelmeted constables in their shirtsleeves? The late Tom Newnham didn’t call his photographic history of the Tour “By Batons and Barbed Wire” for nothing!

The sheer carelessness with which Ardern and her colleagues have relinquished their winning political narrative is astonishing. Already weakened by its poor handling of Delta and Omicron, this Government’s botched response to the Freedom Convoy has changed their story dramatically. Labour no longer seems willing – as it was throughout 2020 – to go in hard and early for the Team of Five Million. In fact, it seems unwilling to go in hard at all. Small wonder, then, that the enemies of reason and science are feeling vindicated and emboldened. Or that the Team of Five Million is feeling a lot let down – and not a little fearful of what happens next.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 14 February 2022.

A Very Lucky Escape.

Brave Faces At Danang: David Parker and Jacinda Ardern field questions from the news media at the meeting of Apec in Danang, Vietnam. What the new Labour-led government needed more than anything else from this meeting was what they came home with - Time.

THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (TPP) is not dead, but neither can it be said to be in the rudest of health. Considerable last-minute diplomatic scurrying was required to save the Japanese government from a humiliating loss of face. Negotiations, accordingly, are said to be “continuing”. Nothing, however, should be expected before February 2018 – at the earliest. Which means that, for the moment at least, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Trade Minister David Parker, like Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, have taken possession of the commodity they most needed to bring home from Danang – Time.

The situation into which Ardern was flying aboard the RNZAF’s Boeing 757 at the end of last week offered no guarantee that such precious time would be on offer. Danang was fraught with multiple dangers: economic, diplomatic and political.

As the leader of a small trading nation, New Zealand’s prime minister simply cannot affect a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to something as big as the TPP. The inescapable truth confronting Ardern (as it has every one of her predecessors) is that this country’s status as a first-world nation is inescapably contingent upon earning sufficient overseas currency to import the sort of lifestyle to which most Kiwis believe themselves entitled. Bluntly: faced with the choice of announcing whether her government is “in” or “out” of a major trade agreement; no New Zealand prime minister can say “out” with impunity.

All of the official advice the Prime Minister has received to date on the TPP will have kicked-off from that position. Certainly, it will have been the argument reiterated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). It will also have been the lustily repeated refrain of this country’s major exporters. Likewise, from what might be called the “globalisation lobby” imbedded in NGO-land, academia and the media.

Taken together, a very large and intimidating crowd to say “no” to!

Even larger and much more intimidating, however, are the nation states determined to see the TPP (or, as it has rather tendentiously been re-named, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership – CPTPP!) ratified and implemented. The agreement’s principal cheerleader (now that the USA has withdrawn) is Japan, whose diplomatic reach proved to be more than long enough to secure Justin Trudeau’s return to the negotiating table. (It may have been Canada’s wish to walk away from the TPP-11 altogether, but Japan’s “arguments” were clearly “persuasive” enough to cause its prime minister to have second-thoughts and turn around!)

If Canada, with 36.3 million people and the second-largest economy of the remaining TPP signatories, couldn’t make it all the way to the departure lounge at Danang, then what were the odds of little New Zealand making it even as far as the door? New Zealand political leaders have only to review their country’s diplomatic, military and economic experience with the USA between 1984 and 2010 to gain some appreciation of the costs associated with taking a “principled stand”. World headlines last only a few days – their consequences can last for decades.

And then, of course, you have to come home.

It is probable that the National Party was hoping more earnestly than Professor Jane Kelsey and the entire New Zealand Left that Prime Minister Ardern would take a “principled stand” on the TPP. Had she stood up and said “no”, not only would she have felt the full wrath of Japan and its allies, but, from the moment her feet once again touched New Zealand soil, she would also have felt the full blast of a searing political firestorm.

The Urgent Debate in Parliament, which Speaker Mallard would have no choice but to grant the National Opposition, would only be the beginning. Day after day, the voices of exporters, business leaders, bank economists, business journalists, media commentators, academic experts and the globalisation lobby would be ringing in the Labour-NZ First-Green Government’s ears.

The Prime Minister and her Cabinet colleagues would then have just two political options: either back-down, or double-down.

If they backed-down, then Ms Ardern and her government would stand exposed as a bunch of juvenile attention-seekers who simply had not thought through the consequences of their irresponsible actions. It would be a full-scale debacle from which they could not recover.

But, doubling-down would be even worse. By adopting a sharp-edged, radically left-wing, stance on international trade at both the diplomatic and domestic levels, Ms Ardern’s government would rapidly find itself re-positioned among the world’s “nutty” nation states. Inevitably, New Zealand would find itself drifting, economically and diplomatically, under the influence of China and Russia. For an overwhelming majority of New Zealanders, this would represent an unmandated repudiation of everything their country stands for. Politically, it would be unsurvivable.

To Ms Ardern’s and Mr Parkers’ no doubt immense relief, both of these catastrophes have been avoided. They have had a very lucky escape.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 November 2017.

Nothing "Accidental" About Jacinda's Success.

On Her Way To The Top: No one who witnessed Jacinda Ardern’s extraordinarily accomplished performance before the assembled news media on Tuesday morning could reasonably describe her as an “accidental” leader. Hardened journalists – many of them disposed to be cynical about the day’s dramatic turn of events – were astonished at her easy command of the situation. Here was wit, verve and – in her own words – “unrelenting positivity”. Photo by Cameron Burnell.

 

IT’S ONE OF THOSE PICTURES. The sort that captures not just a moment, but the essence of a moment. Justin Trudeau had one. It was taken nearly a year before he became Canada’s prime minister but, looking at it, you kinda knew that’s where he was headed.

 

On Tuesday morning, Fairfax photographer, Cameron Burnell, took “one of those pictures” of Jacinda Ardern. In a brilliant example of artistic opportunism he spotted Labour’s new leader striding alone through the corridors of power and pressed the shutter.

 

The image he selected for the Stuff website tells Tuesday’s story with minimalist precision.

 

First and foremost, it is about the stark isolation of political power. Jacinda strides, unaccompanied, down one of Parliament’s carpeted corridors, head turned slightly to the right, as if seeking confirmation that she is not being observed. Whether she should accept, or decline, the Labour leadership, was not a decision to be shared, or put to a vote, or turned into a media spectacle: it was hers alone.

 

The importance of the job she is being asked to do; the weight of the responsibility her colleagues are asking her to take upon her shoulders; is etched upon Jacinda’s features. The face in this photograph is not the happy, smiling countenance so familiar to the readers of women’s magazines. Unaware that she is being photographed, Jacinda’s expression is one of quite startling seriousness.

 

Her mouth is set in a straight line, her nostrils slightly flared – like a beast of prey testing the flavour of the air. Most striking of all are her eyes. Shrouded in shadow they absorb the detail of her surroundings without a trace of furtiveness or fear. This is the face of someone in control of both herself and her circumstances.

 

The other quality conveyed in Burnell’s photograph is purposeful movement. Jacinda strides towards the camera like a person with no time to lose. The cell-phone gripped tightly in her right hand suggests that the irksome but necessary back-and-forth of collegial communication has come to an end. She is moving now, irresistibly, towards her rendezvous with destiny.

 

Looking at this photograph, it is extremely difficult to accept the idea that Jacinda Ardern is Labour’s “accidental leader”. The woman captured by Burnell’s camera does not look like someone overwhelmed by circumstances beyond their control. Hers is not the face of the agonised prophet who beseeches God to “take this cup away from me”. Quite the reverse. The woman in the photo wears a look of “cold command” that Shelley’s Ozymandias would recognize instantly as the mark of a fellow sovereign.

 

Which is not to say that each step of Jacinda’s ascension to the Labour leadership was planned with icy precision. As Oliver Cromwell observed of the vicissitudes of personal fortune: “no one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”

 

What we can say, however, is that ever since her time in Helen Clark’s office, Jacinda has understood the supreme importance of keeping oneself in the proximity of power. She has also noted how ready most leaders are to bestow power upon those who appear to have no serious interest in wielding it.

 

Labour is not the sort of party in which naked ambition goes unnoticed. The moment an MP is suspected of having designs upon the top job, every other aspirant for the position becomes their enemy. Better by far to evince a non-threatening naivety; a willingness to smile winningly for women’s magazines; and, most especially, an oft-expressed reluctance to climb the greasy pole. That way, one’s inexorable approach towards the throne goes largely unnoticed, until the day suddenly arrives when one’s astonished rivals find themselves agreeing that there’s no one else with a better claim to sit on it.

 

No one who witnessed Jacinda Ardern’s extraordinarily accomplished performance before the assembled news media on Tuesday morning could reasonably describe her as an “accidental” leader. Hardened journalists – many of them disposed to be cynical about the day’s dramatic turn of events – were astonished at her easy command of the situation. Here was wit, verve and – in her own words – “unrelenting positivity”.

 

Jacinda clearly means to emulate Justin Trudeau’s highly successful “sunny ways”. New Zealand voters tempted to see Jacinda as some sort of political Pollyanna, however, should study Cameron Burnell’s photograph.

 

Tuesday was no accident.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 4 August 2017.

A Cautionary Tale From Canada.

"Something In The Air": Whatever it was in his country’s political atmosphere in 2015, Justin Trudeau blew out enough of it to inflate the Liberals’ appeal to winning proportions. With Winston exhaling anger, and Metiria Turei breathing hope, Andrew Little and Labour need to offer the New Zealand electorate something more than a deflated ideological balloon.

 

THOMAS MULCAIR wanted to be Prime Minister – and he thought he knew how to make it happen. His New Democratic Party (NDP) was the leading Opposition contender in a Canada grown weary of Stephen Harper’s brutal Conservative Government. More importantly, the formerly dominant Liberal Party had been reduced to a risible rump of just 36 MPs in the Canadian House of Commons. Its leader, Justin Trudeau, may have been blessed with a famous political name, but was widely dismissed as a pretty playboy who knew a lot more about snowboarding that he did about grown-up politics. Thomas Mulcair was far from being the only Canadian convinced that the 2015 General Election was the NDP’s for the taking.

 

But that’s not how the story ended. Determined to present both himself and the NDP as sensible and responsible, Mulcair prevailed upon his party colleagues to jettison any and all policies likely to scare the Canadian establishment’s horses. Canada’s equivalent of the NZ Labour Party promised “budget responsibility” – with bells on. Public spending would be kept in check and surpluses fattened. “Nothing to be frightened of here”, was Mulcair’s message to the people he thought he had to please to win. That was the point at which Justin Trudeau demonstrated that he was a great deal more than just a pretty face.

 

Mulcair’s decision to steer the NDP sharply to the right of its traditional position on the centre-left had opened up a dangerous amount of unoccupied ideological space. If Mulcair was willing to make his peace with neoliberalism, then Trudeau was prepared to lead his party into a passionate Keynesian embrace. With interest rates at record lows, Government borrowing would never be cheaper. The Liberals would give Canada’s economy the much-needed shot in the arm that Harper’s austerity programme had forsworn. Health, education and infrastructure would be the big winners. The Liberals, said Trudeau, were the only political party who understood that more of the same was unacceptable. Oh yeah – and they were ready to legalise marijuana!

 

Outflanked, out-argued and out-bid, Mulcair watched helplessly as the NDP’s poll-numbers dwindled and the Liberal Party’s popularity surged. Policy audacity was made palatable by Trudeau’s relentlessly sunny disposition. The clouds of gloom parted, and by the time the last ballot paper was counted the “pretty playboy” had rewritten Canada’s political rulebook. Not only had the Liberal’s driven the NDP into third place, they had won an absolute parliamentary majority. It was a comeback without precedent in Canadian history.

 

Trudeau’s historic 2015 election victory is a cautionary tale which New Zealand’s Labour leader would do well to study closely. There is still time for Andrew Little to halt his party’s relentless march towards the political centre. Still time to understand that the “something in the air” which Shane Jones talks about is the factor that will determine the outcome of this year’s election. Still time to realise that whatever it is in the political air, it is not a desperate public hunger for more of the same.

 

There is anger in the air – and that is the harvest which Winston Peters and NZ First are determined to gather in. But the air is also stirring with hope. That’s what the Greens have – at almost the last possible moment – understood. And, just like Justin Trudeau, they are preparing to ride the forgotten New Zealander’s hope for something better all the way to the biggest share of the Party Vote they have ever received.

 

Thomas Mulcair’s bid to become Canada’s Prime Minister foundered on his strategy of offering his opponents the smallest possible target to shoot at. All he succeeded in doing was reducing the NDP to something so dull and uninspiring that a crucial number of Canadians lost sight of it altogether.

 

Whatever it was in his country’s political atmosphere in 2015, Justin Trudeau blew out enough of it to inflate the Liberals’ appeal to winning proportions. With Winston exhaling anger, and Metiria Turei breathing hope, Andrew Little and Labour need to offer the New Zealand electorate something more than a deflated ideological balloon.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 19 July 2017.

One Picture's Worth.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Canadian Press photographer Andrew Vaughan's 2013 photograph captures that magical political moment when anyone with a beating heart knows – just knows – that this is the one to watch?

 

IT’S ONE OF THOSE PICTURES that freeze-frames a political leader in the making. Half-turned from the enthusiastic crowd of Prince Edward Islanders he is addressing, Justin Trudeau’s upraised arm acknowledges something beyond the image’s point of reference. A pale sunlight lightly gilds the palm of his outstretched hand and highlights the features of his face. Taken in 2013, Canadian Press photographer Andrew Vaughan’s photograph captures to perfection the same political magic that swept the 43-year-old Trudeau to victory in last Monday’s Canadian general election.

 

Inevitably, those New Zealanders favouring a change of government in 2017 are scouring the ranks of opposition parties for a Kiwi politician capable of bringing some Trudeau magic to our own political arena.

 

Labour supporters, in particular, are looking at the rather dour figure of Andrew Little and wondering whether he has what it takes to unseat a Prime Minister as popular as John Key.

 

New Zealand leftists who have studied the Canadian campaign are worried that Labour has already committed itself to the sort of moderate and fiscally unadventurous course that saw Canada’s left-wing New Democrat Party (NDP) relegated to third place behind Trudeau’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

 

So concerned was the dour and rather tetchy NDP leader, Tom Mulcair, to fend-off criticism that his party wasn’t ready to manage the Canadian economy, that he promised voters to keep the federal Budget in permanent surplus. Given that this was also Stephen Harper’s policy, Mulcair’s decision allowed Trudeau to outflank the NDP on the left. Little’s critics look at his inept handling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership issue and wonder whether something similar hasn’t already happened here.

 

The Greens male co-leader, James Shaw, certainly shares much with Trudeau in terms of projecting youthful energy and good looks. Less certain, however, is his willingness to adopt the Liberal leader’s strategy of inviting voters from across the political spectrum to join his nationwide crusade for “real change”. And, even if he was up to persuading his colleagues to leave the the safety of their eco-socialist strongholds, and embrace the political centre, would he be able to persuade the electorate that the Greens, in office, would remain politically centred? It is the curse of the Greens to be perceived as enthusiastic promoters of a rather narrow ideological agenda. Historically, the Canadian Liberal Party has attracted solid voter support across the whole electorate. It’s a trick New Zealand’s Greens have yet to master.

 

NZ First, by contrast, has never ceased presenting itself as a party with the broadest possible voter appeal. Indeed, in its early days, back in the early 1990s, its support rivalled that of the National Party’s. Unashamedly populist in his political instincts, NZ First’s long-time leader, Winston Peters, would dearly love to replicate Trudeau’s utter trouncing of John Key’s good “mate”, Stephen Harper. Unfortunately, youthfulness is not a quality many people associate with NZ First. A sunny disposition is, however, well within Peters’ political repertoire. One flash of his 1,000 watt smile generally absolves him of most political sins. Which is why, presumably, NZ First’s highly successful by-election campaign in Northland was so jaunty and up-beat. If Peters is able to demonstrate such sunny ways on a national scale in 2017, who knows what might happen.

 

In the end, however, most of the speculation about whether a Justin Trudeau is lurking, unrecognised, in the Opposition’s ranks circles back to the Labour Party. If Little is too dour and grumpy to beat the man Bill English once described as “bouncing from cloud to cloud”, who is left to bounce Labour’s banner up there alongside him?

 

Grant Robertson would probably say Grant Robertson. (And, to be fair, there are many in the Labour Party who would agree!) But, to the rest of New Zealand, Robertson can come across as just a bit too complacent; a bit too absolutely, arrogantly, Wellington. For the best part of a year, he’s had plenty of chances to shine as Labour’s finance spokesperson. That his light has barely flickered in that role must count heavily against him.

 

Which leaves just two names for Trudeau-seekers to play with: Stuart Nash and Jacinda Ardern. Both are well endowed with the skin-deep trappings of the Trudeauesque politican: youth and good looks. Nash even boasts a famous Labour name – although, the number of people who know that New Zealand once had a Prime Minister called Walter Nash cannot be very large. Ardern, herself, is already registering in the preferred Prime Minister stakes – always a sign of better things to come. The positives are definitely there for both MPs.

 

But can either of them boast a photograph like Andrew Vaughan’s? Has a photographer ever frozen Nash or Ardern in that magical political moment when anyone with a beating heart knows – just knows – that this is the one to watch?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 27 October 2015.

Here Comes The Sun: Justin Trudeau Changes Canada's Political Climate.

Favourite Son: The young Liberal leader with the famous name was convinced that, more than anything, Canadians were hoping for a change in their country's political climate. So that is what Justin Trudeau gave them. His “sunny ways” broke up the ice of Harper’s endless winter. The wind dropped away. The sun came out. The electorate’s doubts about the Liberal Party were cast aside. And he won. (Photo: Andrew Vaughan, The Canadian Press.)
 

“SUNNY WAYS, my friends, sunny ways.” The rest of the world may have struggled to grasp the meaning of Justin Trudeau’s words, but Canadians knew exactly what he meant. Canada’s new prime minister was beginning his victory speech by quoting an old one – the highly successful Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919).

 

In the Aesop’s Fable, from which Laurier drew his catch-phrase, the North Wind and the Sun compete to remove the cloak from a passing traveller’s back. The freezing breath of the North Wind strips the leaves from the trees, but the traveller wraps his cloak ever-more-tightly around his body. Defeated, the North Wind makes way for the Sun, who beams down upon the traveller with radiant good will. The North Wind’s chill is replaced by shimmering summer heat. Overjoyed, the traveller casts aside his cloak.

 

“If I were in power, I’d try the sunny way”, said Laurier. And he was as good as his word, choosing persuasion and positivity, over force and negativity, on every possible occasion during the 15 years (1896-1911) he served as Canada’s Prime Minister.

 

Trudeau’s “sunny ways” quip was, therefore, political shorthand for: “The frigid years of Mr North Wind, Stephen Harper, are over; and the years of Mr Sunshine, Justin Trudeau, are about to begin.”

 

But the 43-year-old son of Pierre Trudeau (Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 until 1984) wasn’t content to draw rhetorical inspiration from Canadian leaders alone, his superb victory speech went on to borrow from President Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address.

 

Once again it was about the superiority of positive over negative politics. Having promised Canada a Liberal-led Government that would be “positive, generous and hopeful” he reminded his cheering supporters of the extraordinary campaign that had made it possible. Proof, he said, that: “You can appeal to the better angels of our nature – and win by doing it.”

 

And what a win it was! The Liberal Party began the campaign holding just 34 seats in the Canadian House of Commons. By the end of election day, 19 October, the Liberals had won 184 seats – ten clear of the number needed to govern the country on their own. Lazarus would’ve been proud!

 

How did they do it? How did they rise from third party status to overhaul the left-wing New Democrat Party (NDP) Opposition, which the early run of opinion polls had identified as the front-runner? And, how did Justin Trudeau do it? An MP for just seven years, and leader of the Liberals for less than three years, how did a 43-year-old schoolteacher unseat an incumbent Prime Minister and dash the hopes of his NDP rival, Leader of the Opposition, Thomas Mulcair?

 

First and foremost, Justin Trudeau won because he was … Justin Trudeau. As the son of one of Canada’s most popular prime ministers, Pierre Trudeau (1919-2000) he was always going to be talked about as a prospective prime minister. Such expectations do, of course, have their downside. Still, instant name recognition across the entire electorate is a pretty hefty advantage with which to begin one’s political career.

 

He also had the advantage of growing up in an intensely political environment: absorbing, from an early age, the abstruse rules of the political game; the unique political culture of his father’s Liberal Party; and the intoxicating fumes of dynastic expectation.

 

As if these advantages were insufficient to set him apart from his political competitors, Trudeau is also highly intelligent and blessed with a film-star’s good looks. In 2005 he married Sophie Grégorie – a prominent Canadian TV celebrity journalist – and in short order they produced three, equally telegenic, children. These sort of things shouldn’t matter – but, of course, they do. Right from the start Justin, Sophie and the little Trudeaus looked like Canada’s First-Family-In-Waiting – straight out of Central Casting!

 

And yet, even with a great name, a lifetime spent in and around politics, a celebrity wife and three gorgeous kids, a politician still has to possess, in his own right, the attributes and instincts of an effective leader. Perhaps the greatest of these attributes is political courage: the capacity to do what others would dare not do, and to stick with his choices – no matter how fierce the criticism. He must also be able to read the political terrain. To see a way of reaching his objectives that his own choices, and the choices of others, have opened up. The other attribute a politician needs is an acute sense of timing: of knowing, like Kenny Rogers’ Gambler, when to hold onto your cards; fold-up your hand; walk away from the table; and run for the nearest exit. All that – and luck. Lots of luck.

 

Like the NDP Leader, Thomas Mulcair, believing that he had to prove the NDP was ready for office by coming out in favour of a balanced budget. Trudeau immediately saw that, by tacking to the right, the NDP had opened up a vast swathe of political terrain to its left. Already convinced that the politics of austerity was a dead-end street, the Liberal Leader courageously abandoned conventional wisdom and declared that his government would rescue Canada’s faltering economy – not by reducing expenditure, but by stimulating it through job-creating infrastructure projects. If the NDP was willing to line up alongside Stephen Harper, then the Liberals were only too happy to channel the spirit of John Maynard Keynes!

 

And he did it all with a winning smile and an unrelentingly positive demeanour. He sensed that Canada’s patience with Mr North Wind’s vicious flurries towards war and religious intolerance; his squalls of fiscal and social conservatism; had come to an end. The young Liberal leader with the famous name was convinced that, more than anything, Canadians were hoping for a change in the weather. So that is what he gave them. His “sunny ways” broke up the ice of Harper’s endless winter. The wind dropped away. The sun came out. And the electorate’s doubts about the Liberal Party were cast aside – like a cloak they no longer needed.

 

And he won.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 21 October 2015.