Justin Trudeau’s decision to resign as prime minister has jolted his ailing Liberal party, kicking off a leadership race that could determine the future – or the demise – of Canada’s “natural governing party”.
On a frigid Monday morning, Trudeau said that while “every bone in my body tells me to fight”, a procedural standstill in parliament, as well as his dismal polling numbers, meant there was no path forward to contest a fourth term as leader.
His decision to step away from a job he has held for nearly a decade comes as the party’s political fortunes are in freefall, suffering the loss of key political strongholds in recent byelections and the abdication of prominent cabinet ministers.
All opposition parties have vowed to bring down Trudeau’s minority government given the chance, and recent polling has the Liberals at 16% support, the party’s worst pre-election standing in more than a century.
With eyes on the looming leadership contest, Trudeau’s dramatic reshaping of the Liberal party into a political entity tightly arrayed around its leader – and one with no heir apparent – offers a glimpse into the challenge prospective candidates face in vying for the top job and the damage the prime minister has done in delaying that process.
All politicians seek out allies for advice and support, but Trudeau’s decision to surround himself with close friends within his inner circle was unusual and probably played a role in convincing him he could contest the next election effectively even when public opinion suggested otherwise, said Lori Turnbull, the director of Dalhousie University’s school of public administration. A number of ministers were at his wedding party and the current finance minister is his former babysitter.
“This is somebody who has packed the place with his friends, people he trusts on a personal level, who won’t be transactional with him. You have to be loyal to him. You have to be devoted to him. But he is not loyal and devoted to you,” she said.
Turnbull pointed to his recent decision to force Chrystia Freeland, his closest political ally, out of her role as finance minister after failing to recruit the former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to replace her.
Freeland stepped down in mid-December amid a row over the appropriate response to Donald Trump’s looming economic nationalism. Her scathing resignation letter accused Trudeau of “costly political gimmicks” and cast doubt on his understanding of the “gravity of the moment”.
“He will throw you away in a heartbeat because of what he wants to do … yet he expects this completely undying loyalty from people,” said Turnbull. “Whoever inherits this mess will have just a shell to work with. It’s in tatters.”
Trudeau’s decision to step down follows immense pressure from lawmakers from within his own party, including one who decried the “small cabal” of the PM’s inner circle that pursued “a reckless strategy of mutual assured political destruction”.
His reversal of fortunes has been in the works for years as the public slowly turned sour on a political figure whose historic surname – he is the son of the former prime minister Pierre Trudeau – good looks and charisma elevated him into a global celebrity, or, as a 2016 Vogue profile put it, the “new young face of Canadian politics”.
When he became Liberal leader in 2013, Trudeau inherited a party reeling from a string of defeats. He made swift changes – including changing how party membership was handled – that in effect severed ties to a previous generation of party brass. And he defied expectations, overturning a three-way race to secure a surprise majority government.
But a leader seemingly attuned to the mood of the country found himself embroiled in series of personal scandals, including a family trip to the Aga Khan’s private island, and skipping the country’s first national day of truth and reconciliation for a surfing vacation. Three damning images of the Canadian prime minister in blackface and revelations that members of his family were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a charity to which his government recently awarded a substantial contract also eroded his carefully crafted public image.
Trudeau’s apparent inability to understand public outrage in each case offers an explanation for his protracted refusal to step down and his seeming blindness to growing dissatisfaction within his party and the broader public.
“Every day he remained silent, he increased the number of voices saying ‘you need to depart’. His silence diminished the impression that he made a choice of his own volition and that delay has likely taken a shark-sized bite out of the prime minister’s legacy,” said Scott Reid, a political adviser and former director of communications to the Liberal former prime minister Paul Martin.
“But the inherent self-confidence required to be a successful prime minister, be the kind of person that can compete to lead the country and succeed at it always, always makes you vulnerable to having a blind spot, especially when recognising the end is nigh. And so what we thought was going to be a political story about a man who resurrected his political party is now at risk.
“He won’t just not be the hero of that story, but he may return [the Liberal party] to the same dismal place that he discovered it – or worse.”